The Thermodynamics of Freedom by Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Edwin,

It's an interesting idea of yours to compare the thermodynamics of a molecular system to the dynamics of a simplified human society/system. I think the idea works. You say that if the "progressive" goal to steer humanity's future is monetary equality, and if money equates to energy, then thermodynamic modelling suggests that it will produce an unstable system/society, and most people are actually better off in the "natural"/"conservative" system. I agree with you that the natural order is difference (you say "inequality"), and that equal opportunity in a human society represents potential freedom of choice.

You also explain why we should steer the future of humanity with local control. And again I must agree with you about the necessity for strong local control of most things. I think most people don't want e.g. the poisons and pesticides in our environment and foods; the 24/7 advertising rammed down our throats etc. etc. But I also think that in any system, including nature itself, there are always openings that can be exploited or "rorted" - we are never going to devise a perfect system that thereafter requires no effort or work.

Regards,

Lorraine

Edwin,

I have responded to the comments you left on my essay in my forum.

I really liked your essay. I agree with you that freedom is what makes a society work optimally, and I found your analogy between economics and thermodynamics very interesting.

In your section "A State of Fear", you give the results of a poll that confirms what I was saying in my essay, that people's generalized mistrust in their governments means that any succesful steering initiative will have to be based on the collective will of the people - hence the need for an educated population, especially towards issues important for the future of humanity. I really like your idea to tie welfare and unemployment benefits to an education fund... as you say, "paying people to educate themselves has to be superior to paying them to secure their vote".

I have looked at all the essays, and read more than half of them from start to finish. Your essay is part of the short list that I hope will make it to the finals, and I have rated it accordingly. Good luck!

Marc

Edwin,

Thank you for your kind comments. I'm glad to learn that we are on the same page.

Your son's experience with the iPad and 3D printing is exactly what I am talking about. He now has the sciences (a bit constrained, I know) that are the underpinning of these two devices in his hands. As he plays with them, he will, I believe, use them as arrows in his quiver to 'fix' what he finds unsatisfactory or worth doing. I'm also sure he will find a way to 'break' the constraints and use the sciences to accomplish with these devices a few things, nobody anticipates him doing - that's the real beauty of the App World and that's the real beauty of putting sciences in the hands of the global public. Thank you for sharing your son's story.

-- Ajay

Hi Edwin,

I took a look at your essay and there are several points of contact/connection with what I was advocating in my essay. For example you take a statistical mechanics approach to studying the distribution of money/resources which act as the energy for your system (this is given by the proportionality of E with $ at the top of the 2nd page). And I think this is a good analogy. Also the path integral formulation has a very close connection with thermodynamics/statistical mechanics.

I like the idea of paying people to learn rather than the current system we have where students leave the university with crushing debt. Let me say in this regard that even from the inside of the educational system. It makes no logical sense why educational costs have gone up so much. When I first started working in the Cal State system 15 yeas ago the tuition for an undergrad for one semester was $1000 or maybe even less. Now it is $4000 per semester, and in fact students have trouble getting the classes they need (this has been a recent thing -- when I first came it was never a problem for students to get their classes *and* they paid less). Professor salaries have been fairly stagnant during this period *but* administrator salaries have not and every year there is a new administrative office with its attendant requirements for staffing, support, etc. And most of these offices do nothing good (well they do things but mostly get in peoples way).

But anyway I like the aspect of your essay that as far as possible one should de-centralize things, and also the statistical mechanics approach.

Best of luck in the contest,

Doug

Dear Edwin,

The analogy you draw is interesting. There are some illuminating similarities between various statistical distributions in nature and the distribution of money in a developed human society. I agree with you that an equal distribution of money, or of material goods in general, is not possible and would be undesirable. This is so, whether the units to be equalized are taken to be individual persons, adult persons, households, or whatever.

One thing that I do not understand clearly about your picture is the relationship between stability and freedom. On page 2 at the bottom where you set forth the two possible goals you appear to suggest that the appropriate goal is stability (that is, the continued existence of human society). Stability would seem to be the appropriate goal, because the other suggested goal, namely, equality, is neither possible nor desirable. One interpretation is that maximization of freedom is the way to achieve stability. But another interpretation would suggest that freedom for individuals and social stability are two different things. On that view, the goal is to achieve social stability while doing the best we can to also achieve as much freedom for individuals as possible. This interpretation is suggested earlier on page 2 with the statement, "Our 'cost function' will be individual freedom - we wish to maximize individual freedom while reaching our goal."

Another important question is whether freedom is defined largely, or even solely, in economic terms. We can ask, "Who should be free?" We can also ask, "Free for what or free in what ways?" On your view, the first question has a clear answer: the appropriate bearers of freedom are adult human individuals who have not been legally determined to be mentally incompetent or guilty of certain crimes. But I am not so sure that the second question has so clear an answer. What I have in mind is that economic freedom might sometimes be at odds with other kinds of freedom. If people are generally free to buy, sell, trade, participate in markets, accumulate wealth, and so on, then those people who are most proficient at these activities will gain greater capacity to promote their ideas. But if those ideas are considered solely as ideas, they may not be as valuable in a "marketplace of ideas" as some other ideas presented by people who are less economically astute.

At any rate, these are a few comments. I appreciate the opportunity to read your essay, and I appreciate the comments you made about my essay a few weeks ago.

Laurence Hitterdale

Hi Eugene,

Thanks for writing. I have a question that you might be able to help me clear up:

In your essay, you state that "If no one controls more energy than anyone else, the free energy, used for accomplishing goals, vanishes." I can see that this is true in the physics sense, but can you explain why you think it is true in the societal sense? It doesn't seem to me that equality of resources among citizens would prevent accomplishment of goals by the civilization. This is because humans, unlike idealized particles, share some goals with one another and can coordinate in order to accomplish tasks together. This seems like a huge and relevant difference between your analogy and reality.

Have you considered using economic tools to model human society and distribution of resources? Alternatively, you could try to use your framework to make some predictions, and check them against historical records to see if they reflect reality.

In any case, thanks for provoking some thoughts!

Best,

Daniel Dewey

Crucial Phenomena

Wonderful job Ed!

I found your essay extremely thought provoking. Of course; I'm left with questions about the role of the middle class, which traditionally has been a source of strength and freedom for society. But you provided unique insights into the extremes of our prevailing value systems that show how we got into the current mess, and put some of our current ideological struggles into perspective.

I am not so certain as you that government of itself breeds inefficiency, because the scaling down of government and the de-regulation of industry has not brought about the economic and social improvements that advocates of that approach have promised. But if it is understood that the way in which government's influence has been curtailed were mainly to benefit the alphas, and to further secure their entrenched positions, the outcomes do make sense.

You leave me with many things to discuss and I gave you a high rating, despite the fact that my agreement is not complete. I definitely agree with your closing comment "Freedom requires choice, which is why equal opportunity represents freedom, and equal outcomes represent totalitarianism."

All the Best,

Jonathan

Yes it was me, Ed..

I'm sorry the time taken to write was longer than the server's 'timeout' setting. That 'feature' has become a bit annoying.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Edwin Eugene Klingman,

Great essay! You clearly stepped us through your logic and found a way to relate social issues to Physics, which was the goal of the contest. I think whoever thought of the topic was looking for a very different essay, but no one can say you did not match their goals.

I do see some fundamental problems with your set-up. Work, energy and money do not have consistent relationship. An electric bill shows a nice relationship between energy and money, but natural gas is often far lower for the same amount of energy. A bulldozer can move more dirt in five minutes that the strongest man can move in a day with a shovel. A song that might take an hour to write might be worth hundreds of bulldozers (or might not be worth the price of a shovel.

The thermal dynamics you used was for a closed system near equilibrium. Our social is an open system (people are entering and leaving), it might be possible to assume a steady-state system, but even that is far from reality.

Hope you win this instead of some polar bear loving electric car essay (I like polar bears and electric cars, I have just read too many essays with them as subjects),

Jeff