Talk:Social entropy

Biological Energy of Social and Localized Organisms
The manner in which I'm most accustomed to thinking of social entropy concerns itself with the energy of individual organisms, their state of health, and the energy needed to formulate and convey signals between organisms, so that they may coordinate their efforts in a social system of signals of accepted and coherent meaning, and then in turn govern their behavior and act as they are informed by those signals. As such, the article leaves out some of the "middle terms" of social entropy, such as cognitive dissonance, poverty and wealth distribution, and a host of other subjects, many of which could be linked to other articles in WP. While on a global scale, the price of energy for machines, computers, and communications systems is indeed a factor, the organizations that most use these as their basic "metabolism" are very much protected against levels of social entropy that are catastrophic for individuals -- including the average WP reader. The more ferocious effect of energy prices rising would seem to be the effect on individual budgets of money, time, attention, and personal energy. See Resources and Resourcefulness. The "Malthusian" argument has never exactly been a strong one, and here seems to be a small part of the real problem, IMHO.

Further, these effects on individuals are compounded by their effect on the selection of decision-makers, and those who make important decisions are either required to deal with these entropic effects, or isolate themselves from the very fields they are attempting to govern, drastically affecting their access to first-hand data. Almost all of these effects must also be viewed as causes in an ongoing dynamic system (a closed system being part of the definition of entropy). We could argue that new participants, in the form of new births, immigration, hiring and promotion, as well as emigration, retirement, and sadly, death, all make society an open system, but the enduring nature of a society, which is part of its definition, design, and existence, would seem to preclude that conclusion, in the absence of a huge change in meritocracy and social mobility. The emergence of new technologies and ideas, especially new social memes, seem to me to be the most likely to result in changes to a society which diminish or reverse the effects of entropy.

My first big question then, is whether we mean by social entropy, the inability of a social system to keep pace with the changes of its environment, full of systems that change far faster over time, and have a significant social impact, or the accumulation of internal changes and errors, much like oxidation and caramelization within a cell, both, or some other alternative altogether?

I am glad to see the article begun, but it would seem to be a huge task. I'll try to add some constructive material, but it might help to outline just what everyone expects to be here when it's done, just so we're all on the same page. :)

Mmmmm...Waffles! --TheLastWordSword (talk) 00:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The external links and cognitive dissonance
Wow. Where to begin? Is anyone else as speechless as I am concerning the quality and nature of the external links? Please note well the predictions for 2001 and beyond. --TheLastWordSword (talk) 21:32, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The RS debacle
There are indeed Reliable Sources out there, but they: 1) bore you to death, 2) want to charge you money (for boring you to death), and 3) are mere bricks in a wall of over-paid, under-researched material, reaching no truly informative conclusions of their own. Fun, fun, fun. NOR, huh? I read the lips of the Sirens singing of IAR, but I have no ears. --TheLastWordSword (talk) 15:43, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

New direction
I think the best way to approach this article is to talk about Social Entropy as being the sum of the social impacts of three more fundamental forms of entropy which are somewhat easier to get a handle on from a Systems Theory perspective. Second, all forms of entropy, excluding the entropy of the Universe (heat death, cold death, open-ended?) are relative to levels of complexity, even more pertinent in a discussion of Social Entropy.

So first, in Information Theory, Cybernetics, and Systems Theory, we have the nature of signals between entities, and degradation of those signals, or a failure of signals due to social and cultural differences (thus, social conflict, extending to violence, combat, and war).

Second, we have entropy in the thermodynamic sense, giving us a premium in the expenditure of physiological and mechanical energy, and energy resources, further complicating the process of decision and diplomacy, and placing limits on the time and resources available to deliberate.

Third, we have material decay, in terms of public and private property suffering damage, decay, neglect, and all the costs there.

Each of these three could be broken down into the various impacts in terms of scope, e.g., individual (intra-, inter- and extra-personal), groups of various sizes and included groups, societies and cultures, and global or wholistic considerations. But the main idea, IMHO, is to tie them down to these three types of complexity, and the entropy attached to them. Maybe a companion page on Social Complexity is an idea, but I'm not sure what the hazards there are.

Just as an aside, the Law of Unintended Consequences strongly resembles the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but where would that fit in? --TheLastWordSword (talk) 19:00, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Being a smart-alek social entrenpreneur...
...I thought I'd ask (or should I?) just how I would obtain a degree (or two, or more) from the University of Wikipedia, as one of the implicit goals of WP is to make studying at a college roughly superfluous? --TheLastWordSword (talk) 19:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Re-Entropy
Not that I'm incredibly qualified or anything, but I'm a physics/psychology double major. The fundamental aspects of this article seem to misunderstand the definition of entropy. Quite simply, the entropy of a system is a measure of the number of microstates available to the system (more accurately the natural log of the number of microstates). More often than not it's construed as decay or chaos, but that doesn't adequately describe what's going on. Take the formation of life on earth for example; energy from the sun is absorbed by organisms, organized into structures, and waste energy is expelled as heat. Because the earth is not a closed system, it's the case that the orderdness of the earth increased over time.

If I were to apply the same principle to the social sphere; it would be that probabilistically, social interaction is preferred over non interaction since that allows for the greatest number of microstates. Or maybe more accurately, it takes work or isolation to close a social network, which would suggest that societies will trend towards connectedness over time, or at least that that route is "energetically favorable". That being said, application of physics principles to a metaphor is pretty dubious. I suppose though that people who research informatics think about this sort of thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.246.233.211 (talk) 01:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It's unclear what your objection is. Your suggestions seem to exclude many social system properties.  And I'm not sure "entropy" is being used as a metaphor here, it could very well be meant literally, I think.  BrianPansky (talk) 21:18, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Anarchy =/= chaos
This article erroneously equates anarchy with chaos. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GeorgesMartins (talk • contribs) 00:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I've re-edited the page noting the dubious & unsupported claims that anarchy = chaos. I don't yet properly know how to link talk pages to dubious claims, but help & instruction would be much appreciated. Last time I made the citation it was simply deleted without any replacement of a proper one.

Here is but one of many examples to support my claim that the notion that anarchy = social chaos is a dubious one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain#1936_Revolution

I apologize if my acts are considered vandalism, but I WILL NOT stand for the spreading of misinformation - and I believe the urgent out-of-protocol edit is optimal over letting the dubious claims be. And please note that I did not simply delete the dubious claims as someone else simply deleted mine without helping.

I think I cited the dispute appropriately, this time. The anarchy claims made really ought to be considered for deletion, but I hope a logical discussion ensues, first, so coherence can be sought. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GeorgesMartins (talk • contribs) 16:38, 22 July 2012 (UTC)