Entropy, Life and Blockchain

There is a concept in our understanding of systems that connects the micro level and the macro level – it is the concept of entropy²¹.

Entropy is widely understood to be a measure of disorder and chaos – the higher the entropy the greater the disorder²². The second law of thermodynamics²³ observes that the entropy of a system and environment as a whole always increases – indicating nature’s irreversible transition from order toward disorder or chaos. A maximum entropy is a state of equilibrium where a system and environment’s disorder has reached its peak.

Earlier we discussed the conceptualization of order and chaos in a socioeconomic context. We have picked a side: we are ditching order in favor of chaos. How can we not? We are blockchain revolutionaries, after all. We think that order in our current society and economy represents centralized power and all that come with it: coercion, unjust and inequality; while chaos, on the contrary, represents a decentralized counter reality and restoration of individual sovereignty.

At a quick glance the law of increasing entropy and the irreversible transition from order to disorder (chaos) seems to be leaning toward the social-order narrative: order is good, past is glorious and future is inevitable decay and death and centralized power is the tax we pay to be saved from that future. Order brings along structure and chaos is just unstructured goo.

Yet the above view on entropy is too simplistic and can paint a wrong picture of what really happens in the universe. Yes, 2nd law of thermodynamics must hold – entropy will increase in general. But the universe is a big place, and will live a long life. During this long life, interesting things will happen in some places – entropy could increase, stay the same, and also decrease. Complexity could emerge and grow amid chaos (disorder) – that is the way of life.

The way of life teaches us another story about entropy. The naïve view of entropy and 2nd law of thermodynamics points to an arrow of increasing entropy and chaos (disorder), along with destruction of order and structure. Yet the arrow of life points to increased diversity of structure, and apparently, some sort of order. This paradox between entropy and life puzzled many physicists in the 20th century, e.g. Erwin Schrödinger²⁴. This paradox of life with regard to 2nd law of thermodynamics can be explained away, at least on surface, by pointing out that the

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²¹ Entropy.

²² Entropy (Order and Disorder).

²³ Second Law of Thermodynamics.

²⁴ What is Life?

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universe hasn’t itself evolved to a stage of constant maximum entropy, which is what the idealized classical theory of thermodynamic equilibrium deals with – in reality we live in a stage of the universe that non-equilibrium states still proliferate, and life dwells far from the state of equilibrium. It also helps to point out that life exists in an open system without clear boundaries from the environment, unlike the simple heat engines that classic thermodynamics used to depict and analyze.

It is time for us to update our view from the traditional, 19th century understanding of order and chaos, especially from a socioeconomic context. The notion of order, in the 19th century sense, depicts a state of socioeconomic construct with less uncertainty (which is in accordance with the naïve interpretation of classical thermodynamics) over the notion of chaos (disorder), which is what that socioeconomic construct imagined as rogue anarchy. That notion of order has a clear structure, or hierarchy, but with less option and choice, and naturally favors centralized regimes through all socioeconomic structures.

To resist the traditional notion of order and chaos, save us from centralized grip and oppression, we should look into the secret of life – how it defies iron claws of entropic decay so demanded by the classical thermodynamics, and thrived with vibrant diversity and natural decentralization.

New development in non-equilibrium thermodynamics²⁵ revealed that secret – the emergence of self-assembly²⁶ and self-organization²⁷ in complex systems²⁸ (pioneered by Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine²⁹), as well as self-replication³⁰ in biological systems (recent development by Jeremy England³¹). Simply put, the secret of life is DNA replication³².

This new development of understanding of the dynamics of self-organization has also penetrated into the socioeconomic sphere³³. However, as discussed in the previous section[11], a disconnect of causal links between micro and macro levels in our current centralized economy prevented self-organization to be effectively established. Unsurprisingly, it looks like self- organization can only be effectively achieved on the decentralized blockchain economy – why?

Because decentralized blockchain system could make the jump to become a living organism – so it can utilize the secret of life to defy centralized power and blockage to achieve self- organization. Well, since the secret of life is DNA replication – what is the comparable DNA replication mechanism for blockchain?

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