I realize that the title of this post will most likely have no relevancy to the actual content. This isn't just because I'm confusing. It's because of statistics. There are so many things that blog posts could be about and so many different titles that there could be, that the chances of randomly finding two that match, let alone two that are already the same post, seems nearly impossible... or is it?
One of the laws of thermodynamics state that the entropy of a system tends to increase over time... the fuck is entropy?! Well, I'll tell you... but first, let's go to weather with Sylvia Plath. Over to you Sylvia.
"It's getting hot and stuffy. Feels like an oven! And also I should mention something depressing or about sex, 'cause... that's how I do."
Thanks Sylvia. Entropy... It's hard to briefly explain what it is. It's like disorder, but it's not disorder, so if someone tells you that it is tell them it's not, because it's not. It's also kind of like gambling... you look confused again, but chill out! It's like gambling in respect to what entropy means or does.
Imagine a chess board... no, not that kind. Think of a Lord of the Rings themed chess board. It's way more epic that way. OK, imagine this chess board set up and ready to play. It's highly ordered, no? This would be a low entropy state. It'd be very easy to instantly recognized if something changed to upset the order of this setup. Now, play chess (if you don't know how to play, then just move the pieces around.) As the chess board becomes more disordered the entropy is increasing. It would be more and more difficult to tell if things are changing or staying the same.
There are nearly countless ways a chess board could be set up, but most of them look similar to each other. The similarity you'd see is simply disorder. It seems random. The more disordered something appears to be, the higher the entropy state is. The reason entropy increases over time is that there are so many more high entropy configurations a system can have than low states. This is where the gambling comes in. If you were to take the chess board and put it in a box, then take that box and shake it (assuming all the pieces would stay upright) what are the chances it would end up in a low entropy state? Probably about the same as you winning the lottery. (Meaning you're more likely to get hit by lightning) It's likely going to look random, disorganized, and not discernible from other boards that went through the same treatment.
Making more sense? Well get ready to have your mind hole blown!
Life itself is super complicated. I'm not talking about the box of chocolate kind of life. I'm talking about genes, cells, organs, and all that crazy stuffs. It's SUPER complicated! It's also getting more and more complicated as time goes on.
With each passing generation, new mutations arise, most of which don't help or hurt, or cause the living thing to... not be able to live. And yet, we see a net decreasing of entropy over time in living things... how is this possible? The sun.
The laws of entropy deal with closed systems, but earth isn't a closed system. We are constantly receiving energy from the sun. Plants turn it into food, things turn plants into food, then we turn them into food. We can then use this energy to choose which mates to... mate with. *Cue sexy time music* Because of this choice, we are effectively choosing the "direction" the pieces on the chess board will go in the next generation. After doing this millions of times, the system appears to be organized. Evolution. It's pretty awesome and stuff. Anything that utilizes sex and heat from the sun to create order has to be pretty cool.
In conclusion, we can see that the reason one sees titles and posts matching so often is because we get to choose them. (Sorry that ruins some of the magic for the blog readers, but yeah... we totes choose whatever title we want.)
That's all for now. Join us next time for more adventures.
Thanks for reading and have the best day ever!
