define: entropy.

"disorder is more probable than order."

Today got me thinking about the concept of Entropy. It is a fascinating concept to think about. It made me miss my engineering days.. It seems like everything in engineering had:

1. a definition.

(usually characterized by an equation).

2. a derivation.

(a clear explanation of how you arrived to your stated definition).

3. a problem.

(i.e. a reason that it matters to know this information; the whole point of all of this, some means of progress to arrive at a certain answer to a clear question..).

Man, I miss that stuff so. freaking. much. sometimes...

This day all started in such an interesting way. For some reason, over coffee this morning, a colleage and I got on the conversation topic of "the order of randomness."

We weren't talking about entropy in the engineering sense.. No, those days of Clarity and Reason are Over. We were discussing Medicine... Ever been to a Journal Club? Believe me, it is painful. Nothing is clear. Nothing makes sense. You cannot reason with anyone. And it doesn't end up mattering anyway, because it has no true relevance.

Nevertheless, here were our dilemmas, over our first coffee of the morning, before a day full of certain brain-washing that is primary care clinic:

Is there a force that organizes random events in such a way that in the end it means something greater on purpose? Is our perception of that organization or "meaning" merely our transferred delusion of a greater meaning (often called "superstition"), which we are able to create because of a complex network of mental associations? Are coincidences sometimes too coincidental to explain the series of events, and if so how does this happen? And, finally, is that what God is about?

We were navigating our way through solving this simple puzzle when my MA tried to "Vocera" me..

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Vocera: "Can you accept a call from.. Lisa L"

Me: "yes."

Vocera: "Did you mean to say, 'retrieve messages.'

Me: "no."

Vocera: "I didn't understand you. Did you mean to say ........."

Me: "SHUT UP! I HATE YOU!! JUST PLEASE SHUT UP YOU STUPID WORTHLESS ANNOYING PIECE OF EXPENSIVE AND RIDICULOUS CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Vocera: "I'm sorry. I didn't understand you. Did you mean to call, 'Perlita Mendoza?'"

Me: "I hate my life so much."

Vocera: "low battery"...

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Seconds later, on cue for that particular thought, my MA poked her head in the room and said my favorite phrase of a clinic session, "Em, our first patient is ready..."

I took a few seconds to gather and re-align my thoughts to the menial tasks of the day about to replace the much more interesting ones of this morning. I took 15 or 30 seconds to finish my coffee, take a deep breath, repeat my daily pep talk, "It's ok...this pain is all relative... You could be in the Hospital..." look over to my colleague, shrug, sigh, and then reluctantly start this full Friday in family medicine clinic.

Things happened as they usually do in clinic, and by the end of the day I wanted to kill myself. Again. It's OK, don't worry.. This is routine. Apparently, my 'suicidal ideation' is quite safe. This has been tested ad nauseum.

But thankfully, now safely back at home, my thoughts are able to return to the way my day originally started..

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google.com

define: entropy

-a numerical measure of the uncertainty of an outcome; "the signal contained thousands of bits of information"

-randomness: entropy increases as matter and energy in the universe degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity

-in anesthesiology, entropy is a neurophysiologic description of the patient's cerebral cortical function, designed to express the likelihood of consciousness, intraoperative awareness, or awareness with recall during a surgical procedure.

-in thermodynamics, entropy is commonly associated with the amount of order, disorder, and/or chaos in a thermodynamic system.

-ecological entropy is a measure of biodiversity in the study of biological ecology.

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I did not know who my first patient of the day would be.. I have devised this strategy to minimize the pre-contemplative pain of Clinic by refusing to look at my schedule beforehand.. This is helping with the anticipatory pain, but it sometimes makes my clinic a bit more challenging because I do not start my investigative work before meeting with the patient. I'm still trying to decide which strategy lends the least amount of emotional lashing for the goal of long-term survival of this job...

Interestingly, for some bizarre and ironic reason, I had plans to go to an African drumming class right after clinic. I staffed my patients as quickly as I could spit it out of my mouth, raced home, and met my friend. We had a randomly wonderful evening, and we concluded our evening with Improv Comedy... How appropriate for the theme of this day! Improv comedy? What a clear illustration of the idea of organized randomness!

Often, I cannot help but feel like there is something more connecting events in my life than mere randomness...And that something is more than just "in my head." They say superstition is a delusion based on our own association of coincidental events... But then tell me, how is that I spent a day absolutely immersed in clearly 'organized chaos' when at the same time my colleague (not me), brought up the idea of entropy first thing this morning?? Was I just focusing on the entropy of my day because we discussed it this morning? I do not think so. I think this day was a theme of events, and that theme was entropy, and for some damned reason my colleague brought up that topic this morning... After all, this was the first time I have ever gone to an African Drumming class.. how is it that my first patients were new kids from the Congo?... and I have never been to an Improv Comedy show before in SLC... we finished our meal just as this show was scheduled to begin.. I can't believe sometimes that these things are coincidental. They are too connected to each other.

Perhaps this is my insomnia speaking. I am not sleeping well at all. I feel like I'm peering over the fence from Sanity into "Crazy Town" lately.

Perhaps every day has the theme of Entropy..

Anyway, that is beside the point.

But the other interesting point that I am thinking about tonight is Flowers. For some unexplained reason, over the past two weeks, 3 separate people have given me a gift of flowers... How bizarre!? In fact, I think I have only gotten flowers maybe 3 times total in my entire life before this! And those previous times all seem to have some memory of the association of school dances.. So it is quite surprising that these were all quite random and unexpected gifts! Admit it! This is not a routine occurence! These people are all somewhat peripherally attached to my life... They have no connection to each other... and none of them had any particular reason for the gift (like a birthday or a death, for example).. Why did this happen? I cannot understand, but doesn't it seem like something more than coincidence? There must be a connection, but I don't know what it is.. Whatever the reason, it is quite nice and I would not be opposed to this continuing weekly for a while.

I am currently living multiple parallel universes at the exact same time. And I cannot tell anymore which one is more real! Every time I pick up the book I am reading, which was given to me around the time these parallel stories came to existence -- which is also sometime around the period I stopped sleeping -- it has something very pertinent to say about my current situation! Clearly! Not like, "oh wow, that is a coincidence." It's like the thoughts in this book written by a man named Proust were meant to be read by me at this exact time in my life! Sometimes at that exact moment! Lately, I have been getting text messages that are the written words of the thought in my mind in that instant! Coincidences..? But how? I simply don't believe it.

I have come to believe that these parallel realities are all equally capable of being real...Have you ever read a book and gotten so engrossed that the story in the book is as real as anything else going on in your life in that moment?

"Entropy increases as matter and energy in the universe degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity."

It is almost like a person in real life is watching a movie, then he hits *pause* and reads a chapter in a book, then he puts down the book and calls someone... Originally, he thought the only real thing in his life was the phone conversation. As this person keeps doing this, though, eventually he cannot tell which is real any more, because each experience is so vividly real in his mind.. and each one that is currently happening is in the clearest focus, thereby his current reality... it is just that one is about reading words, one is watching images, and the third is hearing sounds. Perhaps as you have more time or less sleep or both, there is a less clear distinction between these different types of realities. The lines fade and the edges blur...

Perhaps every event that happens in our lives is not only real, but it is also both random and connected at the same time.. whether it is physical or mental or emotional or intellectual. Because, after all, we all know that in order for something to be real, it can be but does not have to be a physical object - it can be a mental concept, too, like "knowledge." And to know the truth of something, we may not be able to place an intellectual definition to it, we just know about its reality in an emotional sense, like "love." The real taste of an apple cannot exist without the physical fruit, but you may be able to describe the way it tastes with words, and that is a form of reality in itself... This is a fun mind game!

These are all different types of realities that coexist on a spectrum. And there is also a real connection among each of these, but disorder is more probable than order in the organization of these events because of the amount of time and energy and focus that it takes to see the connections. Perhaps sometimes, you see the connections more easily because they are more obvious, and we call these things coincidences. Perhaps you can sometimes see the meaning in the connections more profoundly because we want it to mean something "greater," and we call these things superstitions (or fate or karma or irony...) But they are all just a closed "system" of random, yet connected events which make up your life with a force of Entropy (which varies in strength and power) that exists in order to organize them in some way... But it takes energy to see this, otherwise they continue to seem completely random because lack of order is their natural state of being... because "disorder is more probable than order."

This supports my theory that everything in the world exists on some spectrum.. Nothing is black and white, or right and wrong.. It all lies somewhere in between.. And almost always, you can persuade yourself that one conclusion is every bit as believable and real as another if you re-organize it in a certain way, because you have the freedom when the entropy is greater to consciously reconnect things in whichever order you prefer... that is, if you are able to harness the energy required to decrease the amount of entropy in the system in order to organize things...

*Entropy: A measure of the amount of energy in a physical system not available to do work. As a physical system becomes more disordered, and its energy becomes more evenly distributed, that energy becomes less able to do work.

Speaking of, I really need to do my clinic charting.

And then, I totally need to get some sleep.

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http://www.thefreedictionary.com/entropy

*Symbol S For a closed thermodynamic system, a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.

*a statistical measure of the disorder of a closed system expressed by S = klog P + c where P is the probability that a particular state of the system exists, k is the Boltzmann constant, and c is another constant

*lack of pattern or organization; disorder

http://www.universetoday.com/51887/define-entropy/

What is entropy? The simplest way to explain it is to say that it describes the natural tendency of the universe to fall apart into disorder. A well known illustration is the messy room concept. You know that you need to constantly work at keeping your room clean and well arranged. However, you know that if you don’t keep up with the routine the room will gradually return to its messy state.

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