Thermodynamics of Human Nature

12/28/2016

Little tasks, we are often very inefficient at performing them. 

Let’s say I want to fish out my extra phone battery from my very crowded bag.

I know it’s somewhere near the bottom, and the bag is stuffed full. 

The smart way would be to pull everything out and retrieve the battery after I’ve sighted it.

But yet I don’t. I put my hand in, dig around and hope for the best. 

One times in ten, I get lucky and out it comes on the first fish.

But over ten attempts it will be, on average, much quicker to empty the bag, each and every time. 

In our Newtonian world we always regress to the mean. No matter what the task.

But our Darwinian minds are wired towards short cuts.

One explanation is that we are lazy. This is possibly true; all it means however is that we conserve energy by default.

A better explanation is that it just doesn’t matter because, since we are all the same and we don’t suffer a competitive disadvantage amongst each other by being so inefficient. 

That is, we do not adopt the products of learning unless it is disadvantageous not to do so.

I believe that there are two primary forces that oppose each other; conservation of energy and competitive advantage in our biosphere.

You could label these as the laws of thermodynamics of human nature;

1. Humans will always tend towards conserving energy. 

2. Humans will only expend more energy on a task than is usual if they believe that that they are at a competitive disadvantage by not doing so.

3. Dodging a competitive disadvantage must offer an energy bonus that is greater than the cost (as compared to the default unlearned action) for it to be generally adopted.

So, to the kinetics. 

How do we become convinced that there is a better way of doing something as compared to the default approach. How do we convince ourselves that the higher energy approach is more efficient? 

The answer of course is that someone else is displaying an advantage, and we copy them. 

Or, as a pioneer, we stumble upon the advantageous approach and take advantage of it. And others notice. 

So, you will see, we do regress to a mean. But that mean is the mean of human activity and not the mean of efficiency. 

This discourse does beg the question though; how do pioneers do what they do, seemingly at odds with these laws of human nature? 

Well, with enormous effort and training. 

A small fraction of society has become convinced that there is always a better way of doing something as compared to the default approach. 

They have noticed that other pioneers are displaying repeated advantage, and simply copy them. 

So you see, even the pioneers are acting consistently within the laws of thermodynamics of human nature.