is this bullshit?

[rong]

entropy describes the tendency of everything to move from order to disorder, right? 

so, if everything continues to become less ordered, and more disordered, forever - then, wouldn't there eventually be a state of complete disorder achieved?

wouldn't this be a state of ultimate homogenization?  where everything is the same??

isn't this the highest achievable orderliness?

or is it bullshit?

[LMNO]

It's typically known as "heat death of the universe".

[chaotic neutral observer]

I am possibly conflating thermodynamic entropy and information-theory entropy here, but:

Take a dictionary.  Highly ordered, low entropy, right?

Now, burn the dictionary completely to ash, and sweep the ashes into a neat pile.

The dictionary was a nicely alphabetized list of word definitions, but it was also an artifact of the entirely chaotic process of language evolution.

The pile of ashes is completely disorganized (you haven't sorted the ash flakes by size, or anything), and no longer contains any word definitions, but it's of a pretty uniform consistency.

Which one represents order, and which one represents disorder?

[LMNO]

You may have forgotten that both order and disorder are illusions.

[chaotic neutral observer]

You may have forgotten that both order and disorder are illusions.

Hmm?  That was the idea I was trying to get across with my post.

...well, "labels" rather than illusions, but the idea was that both answers to my question were arguably wrong.

[rong]

Well, I do like to say, "random is an order"

After posting, I was able to imagine that someone might reply that, if everything is the same, then nothing can be distinguished from anything else and therefore there is no order.

I think the dictionary becoming ash is an excellent way to describe it.

What is it? A dictionary.
What's that? A book full of definitions of words
What are those? (And those?)
Ad infinitum

Vs

What is it?  Ash
What's that? Ash

Is ash that was a dictionary different than ash that was a thesaurus?

Haha- it is an illusion!

[Doktor Howl]

It's typically known as "heat death of the universe".

Which isn't happening soon enough. 

Hamish,
Doesn't wait 14,000,000,000,000 years for apocalypse.

[PopeTom]

You may have forgotten that both order and disorder are illusions.

Hmm?  That was the idea I was trying to get across with my post.

...well, "labels" rather than illusions, but the idea was that both answers to my question were arguably wrong.

"What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos."

-Kerry Thornley

[The Johnny]

Order and disorder only gain meaning relatively/subjectively, but usually "order" is understood in that there's a volition arranging it in a given manner.

Order can also be understood as complexity of organization, while disorder can be everything returning to its most basic components and arrangement and least effort involved.

Order involves expenditure of energy/effort and a will - disorder can be the opposite.

[The Wizard Joseph]

@ahem@

Just some food for thought. Mathematically speaking chaos is inherently nonrandom. It just appears random, but DOES have a distinctive pattern. One might even perhaps call it something like irrational order, as opposed to the irrational disorder of the truly random.

Chaos theory has show that deterministic systems can produce results which are chaotic and appear to be random. But they are not technically random because the events can be modelled by a (non-linear) formula. The classic example of such a system is the pseudo-random number generators used by computers.

http://faculty.rhodes.edu/wetzel/random/level23intro.html

I got a lot more reading to do, to be sure, but I think I'm right here.

[rong]

chaos (in mathematical terms) is different than order or disorder - it has to do with predictability and sensitivity to initial conditions.

although, maybe you could think of it as some sort of meta-orderliness - like you would think an orderly system would be more predictable and less chaotic, but that isn't even necessarily true - very simple (orderly) systems of pendulums and magnets are very chaotic

the other chaos - the one that combines with logos in certain creation stories -  i think is more like the "end-of-entropy-super-homogenized-everything-is-the-same-because-there-is-no-more-order-to-be-removed-from-the-system" is what i was thinking is some sort of paradox - because i thought that this state of super-homogenity (is that word?) would actually be an extremely ordered state. 

i mean - everything's the same - what's more orderly than that??

but then i decided there can be no order without making a distinction and if everything is the same then there are no distinctions to be made.

this is where i'd like to stop thinking.

for now, at least.