I believe many people are also curious about the name "anti-entropy increaser". Today I will give a unified explanation.
The meaning of ID counter-entropy increaser is actually introduced in the reading group announcement. In one sentence: because life is a process of resisting entropy increase, using self-discipline, we will be able to overcome all obstacles. An orderly life becomes an orderly life, so it is named "anti-entropy increaser".
The word "entropy increase" has appeared in several books, such as "Flow", "Civilization, Modernization, Value Investment and China", "Upward Growth", "Value", "Share" The Road Traveled," "The Leap," and "A Brief History of Time." Every time I see the word "entropy increase" in a book, I am very excited. I feel that my online name coincides with those of these authors, and they all express the same meaning.
"The Road Less Traveled" also explains self-discipline in this way in the last chapter, because everything is developing towards irregularity, disorder and chaos. If you want to change To gain self-discipline, you have to work against the increase in entropy, and this process will be very painful.
Schr?dinger said that life depends on negative entropy. What is the essence of life? If we think of life as a system, then it is a process of transforming disordered and chaotic information from the outside into ordered information within itself by absorbing energy.
So what exactly is "entropy"? "Entropy" is a thermodynamic concept that represents the degree of disorder of a system. An increase in entropy means an increase in chaos, a decrease in entropy means less chaos and more order.
The principle of entropy increase tells us that the entropy of an isolated system will not decrease, but will always increase or remain unchanged. We can understand that "becoming chaotic" occurs naturally over time, which is the so-called "entropy increase"; and if you want to become "more orderly", you need to invest energy in maintaining it, which is the "entropy decrease".
Under the influence of time, we will eventually enter entropy increase. Imagine your house. Under normal circumstances, if you don't clean it up, it will become messy after a while.
Growth is the behavior of anti-entropy. Decreasing entropy makes us more orderly and can resist the impact of time. Once we are not consumed by time, we can enjoy the dividends of time.
Take life as an example. There are all kinds of trivial matters every day. If we allow them to develop, our lives will become more and more chaotic. If we want to return to a state of order, we have to pay a very high price.
Similar things include irregular work and rest, irregular diet, laziness, etc., all because things always tend to increase in entropy.
If we do not actively invest energy in entropy reduction, life will be out of our control.
Since entropy increase is an outcome we don’t want to see, how should we fight against entropy increase? What's the solution?
Physicists have discovered that when a system is an open system, negative entropy flow can be formed to combat entropy increase. For example, the continuous metabolism of living organisms (such as eating, drinking, breathing and other activities) is a process that resists the increase of entropy. This is why Schr?dinger said that "life lives on negative entropy." He said that the reason why life can exist is because life constantly obtains "negative entropy" from the environment, and the process of obtaining "negative entropy" is the process of metabolism. Low-entropy substances are eaten in, and high-entropy substances are excreted, thereby taking away the entropy in the body and maintaining a low-entropy and orderly state of the body.
How to apply the law of entropy increase to personal growth?
Each of us has our own mental system. If a person's mind becomes an isolated system, with neither energy nor information exchange with the outside world, then it is destined to face the end of entropy increasing until entropic death. At that time, even if your life has not yet ended, your vitality will be like a pool of stagnant water due to the stagnation of your mind.
We want to build our minds into an open system. How should we do this?
Use growth mindset and lifelong learning to overcome entropy
For lifelong learners, we learn through daily Building your own mind into an open system may produce compound interest effects in the future; for casual learners, their minds are similar to a closed system, unable to resist the increase in entropy and unable to produce compound interest effects. There is no obvious difference between the two in the short term, but in the long run there will be a huge difference.
This is the transfer application of the law of entropy increase in the individual mind - throughout our lives, our minds have to fight against entropy increase, otherwise it will be difficult to grow.
According to physical theory, when a thermodynamic system reaches another equilibrium state from one equilibrium state through an adiabatic process, its entropy never decreases. Therefore, if you want to combat the increase in entropy, you must make the system a non-equilibrium system and change it from stable to unstable. Only in this way can the system break the equilibrium and form a new orderly structure when encountering a little disturbance, so that random and unavoidable disturbances become opportunities for system development instead of stagnating in a stable equilibrium state. Gradually heading towards entropic death.
After a company develops for a long time, it will enter a stable equilibrium state. If it does not change at this time, it will gradually move toward entropy death. To combat the increase in entropy, the enterprise must become a non-equilibrium system and change it from stable to unstable. Only in this way can random and unavoidable disturbances become opportunities for enterprise development. At this time, what enterprises can do is to actively introduce competition, innovation and self-criticism into the enterprise, so that the enterprise no longer stays in a stable equilibrium state.
How can we apply migration away from equilibrium to our mental growth? There are two methods.
(1) From the comfort zone to the learning zone, or even the panic zone
(2) Subversive growth
p>Personal growth follows an S-shaped curve. At the beginning, there will be a very long flat state, and then it will rise suddenly like a rocket, and finally remain stable at a high level.
I also have a second curve. This year I learned about the second curve of companies taught by Professor Li Shanyou. After development reaches a certain stage, it will rise to another growth curve.
You need to walk on the long flat road again and again, and then jump to the top; after finally jumping to the top, you have to start taking the second S-shaped curve. It's a long and smooth road. Then, continue to subvert yourself in this way.
Why do I like investing? In fact, it has something to do with my name of "anti-entropy increaser", because the investment process makes me truly feel the process of human entropy decrease.
Li Lu said that investment, especially value investment on the right path, is actually a person’s journey of entropy reduction. In this process, you can indeed help to create, and you can indeed achieve "win-win". You not only help yourself, but also help the people around you. And these insights supported by you can make the human world completely different from the objective world where other creatures live. I think this is a very wonderful thing, and I want to share this feeling with everyone. I hope we can go a long way together on the road to value investing.
Peter Drucker said: "There is only one thing that management has to do, which is how to fight against entropy. Only in this process will the vitality of the enterprise increase, Rather than going to death silently. "When an enterprise inevitably becomes fragmented and ineffective, the first principle of management is to fight against entropy, focusing on how to discover and solve problems, how to communicate and give feedback, and how to gather knowledge and put it into practice. Update the organization to the state it had on day one. In this state, everyone can transform their talents into the driving force for the efficient operation of the organization, making the "small universe" as if it was just born, with huge potential.
You see, whether it is self-disciplined life, personal growth, or investment and business management, they are all processes of "anti-entropy". It happens that these four fields are It is my favorite, and I will persist in it for life. I will be a lifelong learner and a lifelong "anti-entropy increaser."
Although this process will be tiring and painful, I firmly believe that it will be worth it in the future.
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