Monday, March 30, 2009

S = k log w

I cannot think of a more trenchant or pithy comment on life and the universe. E = mc2 pales by comparison and is meaningless without this statement. It transcends science and is truly religious in scope. The Ancient Egyptians would have treasured it and one can almost be forgiven for seeing some synchronicity between the use of the letter "S" as a symbol for entropy and as the first letter of the name of the lord of chaos, "Set". Shannon's insight - that entropy applies to information as well as energy - was almost as amazing as Boltzmann's original epiphany. Money (capital, monetary units, dollars, euros, etc.) - because it symbolizes energy and because it is a form of information - must be subject to entropy. Is it possible that financial system is collapsing because it's "S" value has become too high? Is it possible that the trillions of dollars being injected into the system will have no effect at all? Will these trillions of dollars (an amount that is meaningless because one cannot conceptualize it) hasten the decline by pushing the "S" value even closer to infinity. Have we reached the point where our current concept of money will no longer work because money represents too many things? I'm not sure that this even applies, but the thought won't leave me alone.

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