How is Entropy like Procrastination?
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Depends on the corner.
Can your character fight his way out? Talk his way out? Play dead and sneak out while no one is looking? Cast a spell, and suddenly all is right with the world?
Can your character fight his way out? Talk his way out? Play dead and sneak out while no one is looking? Cast a spell, and suddenly all is right with the world?
Okay, I'll admit it, I've written my character into a corner. Can anyone offer a way out?
Maybe if you described the corner a little more?
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Make a hole.
As an writer, you make the box and therefore the corners. What setting, events, or characters make up the corner?
Both eventually implode and destroy themselves.How is Entropy like procrastination?
Well...
Entropy is (are you ready for this? it's physics ...) a thermodynamic quantity expressing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness or uncertainty in the system.
Or, it is the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity: the process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.
A (very) simplified explanation is: you are looking for your great grandmother's will and in the process knock over her priceless and irreplaceable Dresden bowl. It shatters. No matter how diligent you are, you can NOT locate all the fragments and even if you did, could you restore the bowl to its condition prior to your looking for the will.
You can't collect all the smoke and heat and light from a burning piece of wood and reassemble them into a tree.
You can't grow young.
Except in fantasy.
Procrastination is the intentional delaying of doing something that should be done. If you haven't ruined a thing (yet) there's no entropy involved (or at least none in direct relation to the thing). You might say, then, that procrastination is the opposite of entropy, or that it postpones entropic effects on those things that would be affected by you if you weren't such a damned procrastinator. (whew)
As how any of this relates to the character in the corner, I have no idea. But it might be pertinent to the author.
Entropy is (are you ready for this? it's physics ...) a thermodynamic quantity expressing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness or uncertainty in the system.
Or, it is the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity: the process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.
A (very) simplified explanation is: you are looking for your great grandmother's will and in the process knock over her priceless and irreplaceable Dresden bowl. It shatters. No matter how diligent you are, you can NOT locate all the fragments and even if you did, could you restore the bowl to its condition prior to your looking for the will.
You can't collect all the smoke and heat and light from a burning piece of wood and reassemble them into a tree.
You can't grow young.
Except in fantasy.
Procrastination is the intentional delaying of doing something that should be done. If you haven't ruined a thing (yet) there's no entropy involved (or at least none in direct relation to the thing). You might say, then, that procrastination is the opposite of entropy, or that it postpones entropic effects on those things that would be affected by you if you weren't such a damned procrastinator. (whew)
As how any of this relates to the character in the corner, I have no idea. But it might be pertinent to the author.
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Well, the corner is sort of what some have commented on in different ways: Entropy is sort of like "energy to do work all used up, future work exhausted" whereas Procrastination is like "there's energy that could perform work, but it's being delayed, or side-tracked" etc ...
It's a non-literal dream sequence:
One character represents Inspiration and is inspiring people, but to do self-destructive things creatively ...
To me that works, because Inspiration is indeed inspiring people, Inspiration is doing its thing. Just destructively.
The "corner" is, that the character representing Procrastination then threatens to destroy Inspiration ... and the threat is to use the accepted cosmic principle of Entropy as a positive force against Inspiration. (The basic thing being "Entropy eventually will defeat Inspiration")
I can't seem to figure out how to make Entropy be a force or a weapon that can be used in a positive sense, I guess. Entropy is sort of the ABSENCE of force? I need Entropy to be the anti-Inspiration (Procrastination indeed is the side-tracking/negation of Inspiration; but I was trying to make it a battle between cosmic forces, and Entropy fits Physics better there ...)
Probably I just got too symbolic and artsy-fartsy widdit!
But did it help anyone brainstorm and give advice, now that I've explained it somewhat?
Or is it still just artsy-phartsy drivel?
Hep me! Oh, sumbuddy hep me!
It's a non-literal dream sequence:
One character represents Inspiration and is inspiring people, but to do self-destructive things creatively ...
To me that works, because Inspiration is indeed inspiring people, Inspiration is doing its thing. Just destructively.
The "corner" is, that the character representing Procrastination then threatens to destroy Inspiration ... and the threat is to use the accepted cosmic principle of Entropy as a positive force against Inspiration. (The basic thing being "Entropy eventually will defeat Inspiration")
I can't seem to figure out how to make Entropy be a force or a weapon that can be used in a positive sense, I guess. Entropy is sort of the ABSENCE of force? I need Entropy to be the anti-Inspiration (Procrastination indeed is the side-tracking/negation of Inspiration; but I was trying to make it a battle between cosmic forces, and Entropy fits Physics better there ...)
Probably I just got too symbolic and artsy-fartsy widdit!
But did it help anyone brainstorm and give advice, now that I've explained it somewhat?
Or is it still just artsy-phartsy drivel?
Hep me! Oh, sumbuddy hep me!
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Entropy is not a force. It is the "running down," if you will, of complexity, leading to an ever more uniform state. At some very distant time, the universe will have run completely down, because of entropy, and there will be no stars, no planets, no light, no dust, no energy, no anything... just a smooth, uniform nothing.
But that's a long long time away.
So back to your problem: Your character puts off doing something he should be doing. That's procrastination. Does it make sense that he loses something he desires, due to entropy, because of his procrastinating? ex: He puts off changing the engine oil in his car, drives it anyway, and when the machine dies, it is irreparable because of entropy. His only solution now is to buy a new engine.
But that's a long long time away.
So back to your problem: Your character puts off doing something he should be doing. That's procrastination. Does it make sense that he loses something he desires, due to entropy, because of his procrastinating? ex: He puts off changing the engine oil in his car, drives it anyway, and when the machine dies, it is irreparable because of entropy. His only solution now is to buy a new engine.
My brain is crying. It does not understand this thread.
*hush now, little one. I won't make you keep reading*
*hush now, little one. I won't make you keep reading*
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People's feedback was helpful, actually.
What I ended up with was a little vague, but:
Entropy is to Energy spent and exhausted, what Procrastination is to Creativity wasted by being deferred.
They both result in Universes drained of future potential. (Though they arrived at that point in different ways)
It wasn't the direct correlation I was hoping for.
But I hope it slipped me out of the corner I was in (if only by whitewashing over the crack in the wall!
'If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullsh*t' ... as the saying goes!
I love my little opium den/
It's the most peaceful place I've ever been/
Outside the grave/We must go again!
Oh come, let's all go/To the opium den!
What I ended up with was a little vague, but:
Entropy is to Energy spent and exhausted, what Procrastination is to Creativity wasted by being deferred.
They both result in Universes drained of future potential. (Though they arrived at that point in different ways)
It wasn't the direct correlation I was hoping for.
But I hope it slipped me out of the corner I was in (if only by whitewashing over the crack in the wall!
'If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullsh*t' ... as the saying goes!
I love my little opium den/
It's the most peaceful place I've ever been/
Outside the grave/We must go again!
Oh come, let's all go/To the opium den!
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