Entropy in everyday life

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by wegs, May 20, 2019.

  1. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Yep, and it was very helpful.

    So, going back to the shuffling of cards - the deck becomes disordered because the shuffler made it so. The shuffler’s energy increases to create the disordered deck of cards. How does an increase in entropy show itself?
     
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  3. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    I'd quibble about how much information is in a fresh deck, given the choice of "what information". You need, as I say, some fixed "information", whatever you decide that is. It could be the volume of a gas bottle, for instance.

    But yes, generally we decide what we're interested in, and so what information is. Except that doesn't seem to apply to quantum information which does seem to be an objective thing, somehow.
     
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  5. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Lol Oh, and to make matters worse, I posted this thread in the sub forum “Philosophy”

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  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Nobody is sitting at a table playing cards.

    You're still drunk. Stop polluting the thread.

    Galileo's ball drop experiment is one of the three irrelevant references you made.

    It's quite clear why
    two cards with differing masses but the same dimensions
    is not the same as
    two balls of differing masses and differing dimensions.

    Because I like you, I will spell it out for you:

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    I'm sorry you're having trouble with the concept, but you don't need to pollute this thread with your difficulties.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2019
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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  9. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And you speak of weighing cards? That's just weigth and has nothing to do with falling at all.
    https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070613183338AAvfKHQ
    It is clear you do not understand the Law of falling bodies. The difference in rate of fall only becomes obvious at Terminal speeds.

    All things fall with the same acceleration formula.

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    Last edited: May 28, 2019
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    300 lines, and all of it missing the point. Here's two lines:

    This is where your hammer and feather thing does become relevant. Which will hit the ground first?

    Hint: it'll be the one with the greater mass in relation to its surface area. Feathers fall slow for a reason.
     
  11. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Guess my question will go ignored.

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  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Well, that's why I'm trying to stop W4U from polluting the thread. Not only is he wrong, but he devotes vast stretches of pages to being wrong. I'm devoting as little as possible to correcting his misinformation.

    I didn't ignore your (latest) question; I'm just not sure I have a useful answer yet.
     
  13. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Okay, thanks.

    One thing that is for certain - I'll never look at a deck of cards the same way, again.

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  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    yes, in the earth's atmosphere. In space a feather falls at the same rate as a hammer. Watch the space clip @ post #104
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2019
  15. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    OK, you have defined the subjective selections possible. But that only means they are all objectively possible from every perspective you want to, and which provides you with an opportunity to make your subjective selection in the first place. Superposition.

    You do not create, all universal potentials exist outside of any observer. We can only make a "best guess" and sometimes we can prove our observed best guess right or wrong (proof).
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2019
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Which brings us back to the playing card. The more massive one will fall faster.

    That was only 53 posts of derail.
     
  17. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    A deck of cards is pretty everyday, so is something breaking when it hits the floor.

    Things that break because they aren't strong enough are everyday objects that exhibit randomness. As I say, randomness is a thing you expect to see, in this case when a glass or a china cup or plate hits the floor.

    Expectation is one of the key ideas in Shannon's version of entropy of information. And as I said earlier, you don't expect the order of cards to not be changed after shuffling, what you expect is the shuffled deck is "randomized". You could throw a deck of cards in the air to shuffle it too.

    When a china coffee mug hits the floor and breaks apart you don't expect to see a pattern (but, is it art?).
     
  18. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    This is an important point. The discussion on the thread has now moved entirely away from thermodynamic entropy to the different, though somewhat related, topic of information entropy. Trying to follow all this about decks of cards will give you no insight at all into how energy is distributed among atoms and molecules.
     
  19. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think it is very helpful to mix thermodynamics with card shuffling. The card shuffling business is to do with information entropy, which is not the same thing as entropy in its original thermodynamic usage. Trying to consider energy changes in the process of card shuffling is not going to get anywhere useful. I can't see how, at any rate.
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And you are still wrong.

    Any difference in rate of fall will only show up after the cards reach terminal speed in earth's atmosphere. You believe the weight of an ink drop is going to significantly affect the rate of fall of flat planes? It's like betting on falling leaves.

    Moreover are you trying to convince me there is anyone on earth who can tell the difference between milligrams of ink, when you can place the cards on a scale and they will all register the same approximate weight.
     
  21. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Oh do stop derailing this thread with this trivial stuff. It is supposed to be about entropy.

    If you want a Year 4 discussion about Galileo and gravitational acceleration, have it on another thread.
     
  22. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Agree. Not sure how the topic shifted to card shuffling, but the initial examples were that of describing disorder, or at least visualizing what disorder might appear like, using a deck of cards.
     
  23. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    This passage from the Wiki article on entropy captures my discomfort about equating the two usages:

    "The question of the link between information entropy and thermodynamic entropy is a debated topic. While most authors argue that there is a link between the two,[62][63][64][65][66] a few argue that they have nothing to do with each other.[citation needed] The expressions for the two entropies are similar. If W is the number of microstates that can yield a given macrostate, and each microstate has the same a priori probability, then that probability is p = 1/W. The Shannon entropy (in nats) is:

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    and if entropy is measured in units of k per nat, then the entropy is given[67] by:

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    which is the famous Boltzmann entropy formula when k is Boltzmann's constant, which may be interpreted as the thermodynamic entropy per nat. There are many ways of demonstrating the equivalence of "information entropy" and "physics entropy", that is, the equivalence of "Shannon entropy" and "Boltzmann entropy". Nevertheless, some authors argue for dropping the word entropy for the H function of information theory and using Shannon's other term "uncertainty" instead.[68]"

    But clearly it is a live point for debate.
     
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