Civilizational Entropy

Humanity, as a collection of Homo sapiens organisms, can be poetically described as a substance characterized by high entropy and homogeneity — a substance that tends to sustain itself. However, within this space, there are bright flashes of negentropy and heterogeneity that set the homogeneous entropic soup into motion, like a stone cast into a lake creating ripples.

In the context of history, homogeneity corresponds to the majority of the population, capable of remaining unchanged for millennia, while the flashes of change represent revolutionary processes initiated by special individuals or groups. Examples include the Roman Empire, the birth of Christianity, the Enlightenment, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the rise of sovereign nation-states, the Industrial Revolution, and the advent of the Internet. These flashes disrupt the entropic mass, giving it new directions and energy until the next burst of negentropy.

The entropic mass refers to the "majority of people" — John, who drinks the same whiskey as his father; Abdullah, who prays toward the Kaaba as his ancestors did; the senator who preaches the importance of preserving principles laid down 300 years ago by young "state-forming startup founders." These individuals follow traditions without necessarily accounting for the changing environment around them.

Over time, symbols often detach from their meanings. The ritual of communion, where the body and blood of Christ are consumed, becomes a hollow tradition performed because "that's what Granny Mary said." Democracy, once envisioned as a system where all worthy individuals have a voice, devolves into "liberal values," ochlocracy, and the illusion of power of the "common people."

The tragedy is that in this style of existence — which cannot be called true life — the key ability of an intelligent being is lost: self-awareness, understanding one's motivations, and the ability to change oneself, which is the essence of free will. Since the real productive and innovative force is the sentient being, not a "stochastic parrot," societies that fail to promote rethinking, flexible thinking, and innovation stagnate and exhaust themselves, failing to fully realize their potential. This is the difference between Silicon Valley and the Taliban, between a decentralized Web3 state on the blockchain and Ayatollah theocracy.

The world today, as it has always been, is full of stochastic parrots who simply follow their programming without questioning or standing out.

Innovators, the true sources of negentropy and change, look at the substance, the parrot, and then the mirror, and break the status quo. For this, they reap substantial rewards, claiming a portion of the added value they have created.

This requires a degree of personal agency and spirit to be assertive and willing to fight and bend the entropic pressure of external world. Most of the difficulty, however, is to understand and have audacity to believe that a single person can influence a lot more than one usually believes.

This is the phenomenon of the "startup." When such individuals are supported, or at least not hindered, society moves forward. When they are suppressed, society exhausts itself under the pressure of new realities, which arrive like waves, washing away those who refuse to adapt or find their boat.

New realities mercilessly sweep away those clinging to outdated worldviews and action plans, indifferent to the groans, cries, and resistance of those stuck in "how things used to be."

What were Jefferson and Washington if not startup founders? They worked for Britain — the "Google" of their time — before deciding to break away and start their own venture, which succeeded and became the new "big tech."

This is how the world operates. How much of what we have from bygone eras has lost its substance? How many symbols are now hollow? How much can still be broken, allowing innovators to earn their share of glory by building something new: the political and economic structures, social norms, laws, regulations, morality, the biological basis of humans, social mobility, motivations, rewards, and much more?

It is encouraging that these "innovators" can be nurtured, supported, and allowed to disrupt, recognizing their importance to society and human civilization.