Information flows, we think, from those who know to those who don’t. The image of the wise imparting to the unwise has been with us since before the first Athenaeum and with good reason. Picture Neolithic campfires as arenas where parents taught their offspring the mechanisms necessary for survival. For all of human history the process of information flow has largely been unidirectional like heat flowing from a warmer object toward a cooler one.
But imagine an Athenaeum with a turnstile that selects not only who goes in to learn but also who goes out. Imagine an ordered flow of knowledge that is two-way. That is, imagine that the learned accept an inflow of knowledge from any source INTO their elite world.
Apparently, the Second Law of Thermodynamics might not apply in all circumstances.* Entropy, that incessant and ineluctable drive toward universal chaos appears to be susceptible to at least a small and temporary reversal. In 1867 James Clerk Maxwell hypothesized that the H-theorem might break down under the following circumstance: Suppose there were adjacent rooms connected by a doorway. If one room is warmer than the other, then heat will flow from the warmer to the cooler room, and never the reverse. Maxwell proposed that a small creature, now called Maxwell’s Demon, stationed in the doorway could let particles of a certain speed (and energy) pass. Maxwell’s Demon would halt or slow the increase in entropy, or even decrease it: With information, Maxwell’s Demon would create a perpetual machine that ensures learning in both rooms.
We have an analog in what I will call the Second Law of Elitism. Seems that those who sit in the rooms of information, typically those who occupy the halls of academia, the avenues of big commerce, and the chairs of politics are very much like the warm particles gathered together. They deign to spread information into an adjacent room containing the less knowledgeable in order to “teach” them. The warmer of the two rooms doesn’t get warmer; in other words, the room full of information doesn’t get smarter in the process. Like a room full of energetic particles, a room of elite thinkers takes part in a one-way distribution of information.
Leo Tolstoy gave us a hint of this Second Law of Elitism in his 1894 nonfiction work The Kingdom of God Is within You:
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt what is laid before him."
Apparently, Maxwell’s Demon has his work cut out for him. Whatever ideas the “slow-witted man” has, they probably won’t make it through that doorway. The warmer room isn’t going to become warmer. In 1897 Tolstoy wrote in What Is Art?:
"I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding the most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives."
Stationed between the adjacent rooms that house the learned and everyone else, Maxwell’s Demon could serve as a doorman who makes learning reversible, flowing in both directions. He can assess the energy in particles of wisdom in the room of elites and determine whether or not to let them enter the room with ostensibly less energy.
It doesn’t matter who we are, with whom we associate, or what we know. We all need Maxwell’s Demon to let information flow into our lives. Perpetual learning, though a violation of the Second Law of Elitism, is the only way to advance wisdom.
*G. B. Lesovik et al, H-theorem in quantum physics, Scientific Reports (2016). DOI: 10.1038/srep32815; Jung Jun Park, et al. "Heat Engine Driven by Purely Quantum Information." PRL 111, 230402 (2013). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.230402;
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-posit-locally-circumvent-law-thermodynamics.html#nRlv
But imagine an Athenaeum with a turnstile that selects not only who goes in to learn but also who goes out. Imagine an ordered flow of knowledge that is two-way. That is, imagine that the learned accept an inflow of knowledge from any source INTO their elite world.
Apparently, the Second Law of Thermodynamics might not apply in all circumstances.* Entropy, that incessant and ineluctable drive toward universal chaos appears to be susceptible to at least a small and temporary reversal. In 1867 James Clerk Maxwell hypothesized that the H-theorem might break down under the following circumstance: Suppose there were adjacent rooms connected by a doorway. If one room is warmer than the other, then heat will flow from the warmer to the cooler room, and never the reverse. Maxwell proposed that a small creature, now called Maxwell’s Demon, stationed in the doorway could let particles of a certain speed (and energy) pass. Maxwell’s Demon would halt or slow the increase in entropy, or even decrease it: With information, Maxwell’s Demon would create a perpetual machine that ensures learning in both rooms.
We have an analog in what I will call the Second Law of Elitism. Seems that those who sit in the rooms of information, typically those who occupy the halls of academia, the avenues of big commerce, and the chairs of politics are very much like the warm particles gathered together. They deign to spread information into an adjacent room containing the less knowledgeable in order to “teach” them. The warmer of the two rooms doesn’t get warmer; in other words, the room full of information doesn’t get smarter in the process. Like a room full of energetic particles, a room of elite thinkers takes part in a one-way distribution of information.
Leo Tolstoy gave us a hint of this Second Law of Elitism in his 1894 nonfiction work The Kingdom of God Is within You:
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt what is laid before him."
Apparently, Maxwell’s Demon has his work cut out for him. Whatever ideas the “slow-witted man” has, they probably won’t make it through that doorway. The warmer room isn’t going to become warmer. In 1897 Tolstoy wrote in What Is Art?:
"I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding the most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives."
Stationed between the adjacent rooms that house the learned and everyone else, Maxwell’s Demon could serve as a doorman who makes learning reversible, flowing in both directions. He can assess the energy in particles of wisdom in the room of elites and determine whether or not to let them enter the room with ostensibly less energy.
It doesn’t matter who we are, with whom we associate, or what we know. We all need Maxwell’s Demon to let information flow into our lives. Perpetual learning, though a violation of the Second Law of Elitism, is the only way to advance wisdom.
*G. B. Lesovik et al, H-theorem in quantum physics, Scientific Reports (2016). DOI: 10.1038/srep32815; Jung Jun Park, et al. "Heat Engine Driven by Purely Quantum Information." PRL 111, 230402 (2013). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.230402;
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-posit-locally-circumvent-law-thermodynamics.html#nRlv
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