The pioneers of
cybernetics borrowed the concept of entropy from thermodynamics, the tendency of systems
to become less organized over time.They regarded structure and
information as ways of halting or reversing entropy, and information is
sometimes defined as negative entropy (negentropy).
In the past
few days, I have seen a few examples of what appears to be entropy at a
higher level - over time, rules becoming less effective or even
counterproductive.
We keep hearing stories about large corporations paying practically no tax. As we heard on BBC Radio 4 recently, (File on Four: Taxing Questions),
new tax rules are created with the participation of interested parties,
including large corporations (HSBC, Vodafone) and accountancy firms
(KPMG). Having advised on the creation of loopholes, the accountants
then make huge amounts of money selling knowledge of these loopholes to
their clients. Sadly, even this valuable knowledge degrades over time,
and new tax laws must be created with new and more obscure loopholes.
Within a sceptical article about the so-called Robin Hood tax (Algorithm and Blues)
@TimHarford mentined Myron's Law - the theory that taxes collect
diminishing amounts of revenue over time, as people work out legal ways
to avoid paying.
Meanwhile, @CyberSal has tweeted a couple of
links to articles about Payment by Results. Since Deming, systems
thinkers have understood that targets and incentives often don't (and
perhaps cannot) achieve the intended results. Instead, they stimulate
various forms of devious behaviour, known as gaming the system.
I
think the interesting point here is not just that these mechanisms
don't work, but they get worse over time. To start with, people may make
a genuine attempt to do things properly, and some professionals may be
reluctant to game the system, but they gradually get worn down. Those
that don't quit altogether become stressed, depressed and cynical. For
example, if teachers don't teach to the test, and if the head teachers
don't bully them into playing the game, then the school will slip down
the league tables and become non-viable. But this degradation takes
time, which is why I think it makes sense to think of this as another
form of entropy.
How then might this entropy be halted or reversed?
More links: http://storify.com/richardveryard/cybernetic-entropy
Entropy is NOT the "tendency of systems to become less organized over time." I thought you would have known better Richard. There are many examples of entropy (in the form of entropic force) causing self-organization. See for example, this work: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/glotzergroup/home .
ReplyDeleteThere are some very strange things going on in physics today, including the work of Sharon Glotzer and her colleagues to which Nick refers, and I don't claim to understand them.
ReplyDeleteEntropy Can Lead to Order, Paving the Route to Nanostructures (Science Daily, July 2012)
But these new ideas about entropy are not contained in the notion of entropy that was borrowed by cybernetics. At the time of the borrow, entropy was simply a measure of disorder in a system, and that's the version of the notion I was referring to.
Perhaps someone is already working to update the cybernetic notions of entropy and negentropy to accommodate the latest thinking in physics.