Morality... it's all physics!

[Forge]

I came across this somewhat funny hypothesis. Have fun!



Evil is an increase in social entropy.

Small, isn't it? Well, I guess I better go about explaining it. Please forgive me if I ramble or do something confusing; it's one o'clock in the morning, and the screen is getting blurry, as is my mind. I suppose I could have waited until later, but I wanted to get this posted. Anyway, enough of that! On we go!

1. What is entropy?
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "The entropy of an isolated system not at equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value." Entropy is the amount of disorder in a system and always increases. Order and disorder are very important ideas in physics, but I'm not going to discuss them. (Although they, like just about every other subject mentioned in this post, are fascinating subjects on their own.) Instead, let a simple example suffice: Imagine a snowflake. Inside the snow flake, a huge number of water molecules are stuck together in a complex arrangement to form a crystal. This state is very orderly. Slowly, however, the icy crystal melts. As it melts, water molecules break free of their bonds and being to move about, destroying the original pattern. Now the water molecules are floating around and bumping into each other, making this a more chaotic or disorderly system than the unmoving crystal. Also, entropy only goes one way, up. The water molecule will not spontaneously freeze back into a neatly organized crystal. Yes, you can freeze the water, but doing so requires a cooling device, which requires a power source, which requires the expenditure of fuel, the entropy of which increases. (Imagine wood burning to ash.) You see? Entropy, or chaos, always increases, even if it is not apparent.

2. Okay, what does that have to do with evil?
The entropy, or amount of chaos and disorder, in the universe is always increasing. This process wears things down over time. Rocks erode, stars burn out, and so on. All objects resist this process, but some are better at it than others and therefore last longer. It takes a stream of water much longer to cut through a rock than through air, for example. Even extremely complex things like human societies resist breakdown, and here's where the concept evil becomes involved.

Like a crystal, human society is an extremely complex system. When crystals and societies become unbalanced, they fall apart. In a melting crystal, an increase in entropy can be seen as the molecules break loose. Likewise, entropy also increases in societies, making them less stable. However, societies are much larger and more complex than ice crystals, so their entropy can increase in much larger and more complex ways than individual molecules bumping into each other.

What is a common characteristic of things that destabilize society? That's right; they're considered evil. Let's take drug use as an example, which is almost always considered a sign of social decay. Opium nearly destroyed Chinese civilization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Men whose senses and drives are shattered by narcotics are not productive men, so opium destabilized the country (increasing its entropy). Similarly, any action is evil if it increases the entropy of a society. Pretty simple, eh? Actually, it's not simple at all.

Following my above definition of evil, it would seem simple thing to plug in a few numbers and decide all moral disputes. Society, however, is far too-complex a thing for us to measure quantitatively. As in all extremely complex systems, the smallest decision can have huge consequences. Thus, it is impossible for us to create a set of black and white laws to govern all human behavior. Try it, and you'll quickly be able to think up an exception. Let's take killing for example. Thou shalt not kill. Sounds good, we can't have people murdering each other, can we? Of course not. However, there are many instances in which killing another human being is justified. In these situations, although killing does increase social entropy, making it "evil", not killing would result in a greater increase in social entropy, making it "more evil". Thus, all decisions are between bad and worse, as, although all actions increase entropy, some do so more than others. "Good" deeds are remarkably low in evil, "Evil" deeds are remarkably high in evil, and "Neutral" deeds, although still evil, aren't low enough or high enough in evil to warrant distinction. Morals are guidelines designed to help us estimate the potential evil of an action under consideration. Most of the time, murder, stealing, drug use, and so on are Evil, so the moral works. In rare instances, however, they are Good, so it is important not to strictly and blindly follow these imperfect guidelines.

3. If the definition of evil as an increase in social entropy is universal, then why do people argue about what is morally right?
Yes, the definition of evil is universal, but it is such a common, ordinary thing that most people don't think about it. (How often do you think, "Hmm, I have about 14.7 pounds of air pressing down on each square inch of my body"?) They are much more commonly concerned about an action's classification. (See "Good, Evil, and Neutral in the last paragraph".) Since society is extremely complex, the evil of an action is estimated and then compared to the evil of various alternatives. However, there are many issues in which people reach differing estimates on an actions evil. For example, one person might calculate homosexual marriage as promoting social stability (only a small increase in social entropy) whereas another person might calculate it as extremely detrimental (a large increase in social entropy). This is why two people whose ideas are in complete contradiction can both believe they are right.

4. Is there anything that is not evil?
As I said before, all actions increase entropy, and, when applied in a sociological context, are therefore evil. That, however, assumes that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is true. If there was some way to "cheat" and get around the law (We presently have no idea how to do such a thing or even if it's possible.), then the being in control of such a technique would be, literally, infinitely powerful and, even more strangely, infinitely good. Not Good as previously described, a lesser evil, but good, able to decrease social entropy. This seems to fit many people's conception of God. But that is another subject entirely.

[Felgar]

Nice thought but it's a stretch.

Also consider that entropy only decreases for a given system as a whole. With energy input from an external system, entropy can increase locally. When that happens, you have then expanded your system to include the source of the energy and the law still holds.

For the Earth, the external source of energy is the Sun, and therefore there's no reason that entropy on our planet has to decrease at all. For our solar system as a whole it decreases, but we have a good 5 billion years before we run into problems with the sun no longer being a source of energy for people living in our solar system.

[August]

If it is all physical, how can we hold anyone accountable for their actions, since it is all predetermined by the laws of physics?

[BGoodForGoodSake]

The post didn't say it was all physical, it said it was all physics. He used the principal from the second law of thermodynamics and applied it to social interactions.

[August]

The post didn't say it was all physical, it said it was all physics. He used the principal from the second law of thermodynamics and applied it to social interactions.

Can the second law of thermodynamics apply to the non-physical?

[Canuckster1127]

The post didn't say it was all physical, it said it was all physics. He used the principal from the second law of thermodynamics and applied it to social interactions.

It's actually pretty ironic.

Isn't the misapplication of the second law of thermodynamics by creationists to argue against the evolution of organisms of higher complexity as pet peeve of the scientific community?

Now people are going to argue the 2nd law of thermodynamics as a basis of morality?

[BGoodForGoodSake]

The post didn't say it was all physical, it said it was all physics. He used the principal from the second law of thermodynamics and applied it to social interactions.

Can the second law of thermodynamics apply to the non-physical?

Of course not, I took it as a joke.
=)