Thermodynamic footprints

[GliderGuider]

17. I don't think it would be a violation.

All the principle says is that self-organizing systems transform energy as fast as they can, and that the degree of transformation governs the degree of organization. If a potential energy gradient isn't as steep any more, the system that uses it may progressively lose organization until it can no longer retain coherence. There are a couple of ways (at least) that a system can fight to retain its coherence in such a situation. The obvious one is to find another gradient - a different energy source. Another is to increase its efficiency at turning the remaining potential energy into work.

We're seeing this at work in human society already, in the push to develop alternative energy sources and the drive to increase energy efficiency. That doesn't necessarily mean that we are on the brink of losing coherence though, because healthy ACK systems use the same techniques to increase their growth and organization. However, it's the behavior I would expect in a system that recognizes an imminent threat to its coherence and is trying to stave off decoherence. I'm of course talking about the threat of climate change here.

The Green Revolution was a similar defense mechanism. Starvation and the stagnation of population growth due to food supply limits was the threat to coherence. The response was to increase production efficiency through the use of fossil fuels. From a thermodynamic perspective that move can be seen as inevitable, because it had the benefit of hugely increasing the entropic component of agricultural activity. The evidence that it worked as expected is the increase of order and hierarchy within the agricultural system (i.e. the appearance of corporations like Cargill and Monsanto).