"Magic is the engineering of coincidence"

Category: Magic

The Resurrection of Entropy

Entropy is usually described as a ‘measure of disorder’.

This is not precise. Entropy is actually a measure of possibilities. It is only because there are so many possibilities that are disordered, and so few that we would recognize as order, that this definition is usually glossed over.

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases over time. This causes confusion if you think of entropy as disorder, because order tends to be self-organizing, and thus increasing over time. (The explanation will be that to create order, large amounts of disorder need to happen, and so the second law is not violated.)

It’s much easier to imagine possibilities increasing over time, if you think about how many outcomes can result from a single choice. Now imagine a web of increasing possibilities spreading out over time, each one forging its own path.

This is exactly what the Timeless Multiverse looks like. Thus, entropy can be mapped onto the Schrödinger equation which already describes the spread tree of possibilities that composes the Timeless Multiverse.

Now science is re-investigating the nature of entropy. And that investigation is throwing up hints of the Timeless Multiverse.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2469972-quantum-disorder-is-dependent-on-who-is-looking-for-it

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2452045-quantum-theory-is-challenging-long-standing-ideas-about-entropy

The idea is that there are two basic kinds of entropy, analogous to the two different types of time. There is thermodynamic entropy, which corresponds to the dimension of time, and informational entropy, which corresponds to the subjective passage of time (which doesn’t, of cause, actually pass – we report each section of timeline as we experience it). Thermodynamic entropy is all the possibilities. Informational entropy talks about the possibilities that we have no knowledge of.

It’s been a long standing argument in physics as to whether these two are the same, mostly because lots of people are fixated on a single universe.

Another interesting entropy fact is that the quantum formula for entropy becomes the classical formula for entropy as the passage of time tends towards zero – i.e. as it approaches the Wheeler DeWitt equation, which was formulated to combine relativity and quantum physics, but ended up doing away with the passage of time, and so not very useful for quantum gravity.

This implies that as you consider the total entropy for the Multiverse, it matches up with the ‘outside’ picture of the Multiverse that the Wheeler DeWitt equation gives us.

What this shows us is that the Second Law of Thermodynamics actually depends on the topology of the Multiverse 🙂

Mission Statements

Whenever I see a company has a ‘mission statement’ it makes me sigh heavily. It will almost always be full of long words for no reason and make very little sense. It is such a common thing that there are idiot programs that will generate them for you if you have no idea what your company actually does.

So much corporate communication is meant to instill belief in your company without actually building a belief system. This is magical thinking without any actual magical training. Magic spells are traditionally written in incomprehensible languages and declaimed in important tones, but a statement of desire is usually the first step.

What disappointed me about magic

When I first got into researching these things that nobody understood (and thus usually translated this not understanding into denial or blind acceptance) I had not yet freed myself of some of the romantic notions associated with magic and the paranormal.

Being a great lover of books, one trope that I was the most disappointed to find was not true was the idea of the grimoire. A big, fat, mysterious book bound in some unspecified leather, handed down from before the Renaissance and containing the secret wisdom of the Universe.

Certainly there are many grimoire in existence (even if impressive lies are usually told about their provenance) but they only contain, at best, a magical system, usually with long and complex preparations to convince you that this is SERIOUS BUSINESS. Which is the point of any magical system, of course.

Then there are utterly non-existent books like the Necronomicon which have been brought into existence by sheer force of will – even if they bear no resemblance to the supposed original. I guess that counts as a magical act.

What do you call yourself?

When I first started researching magic, I called myself a magician. This went very well until I was talking to a friend of mine and mentioned that I was a magician.

“Oooh,” she said, “I love Jerry Sadowitz!”

“Yeah, so do I, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

So I started calling myself a wizard. I had a brief period of doubt later on when Antony Mackie in “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” said that “a sorcerer was just a wizard without a hat on“.

Should I be wearing a hat? Or should I call myself a sorcerer?

No, and no. I don’t have the beard to go with the hat, and if ‘wizard’ seems pretentious, then ‘sorcerer’ kicks it up a large notch.

I’ve been in progressive rock bands so I know a bit about pretension.

A couple of friends of mine got quite annoyed at me calling myself a wizard. Probably because they thought I was going off my head. Impressed that, so far, no-one has said “What, like Harry Potter?”

Harry Potter is fictional. Real wizards are not as exciting as pretend wizards.”

Best moment was a friend of a friend, who, when he saw a picture of me breathing fire, said “Is he a god?”

“No,” my friend said sadly, “just a wizard.”