In Defense of Chaos

Chaos gets an undeservedly bad rap. As someone who admittedly has something of an attraction to chaos I have spent a great deal of time pondering what it is exactly about chaotic things and situations I find so appealing. An easy and lazy answer relates to my dread of boredom. Let's face it, order is a lot more boring than chaos. While this may be part of the answer it is not even close to all of it, and in this piece I will provide alternative arguments in defense of chaos. First off, I don't think it is much of a stretch to suggest that my opinion of the value of chaos runs counter to the majority of persons who it seems hold the exact opposite viewpoint. To most, chaos is a thing to be avoided and minimized. It provides no positive benefit, instead it only sows confusion, or reduces efficiency, or is responsible for a million other negative consequences. In the past I have been called both an "agent of chaos" and "bringer of chaos." I took no offense at the time and believe both to be fairly accurate characterizations which I take pride in, though I do not believe they were said necessarily as compliments.

As I often point out when defending my chaotic ways to the more orderly majority, the universe agrees with my position. The law of entropy tells us that disorder (aka chaos) is constantly increasing in the universe. Technically it says that there is a very, very high (approaching infinitely high) probability of entropy always increasing. Also important to note that while there is some connection between chaos theory (which is a branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behavior is highly sensitive to slight changes in initial conditions, such that small alterations can give rise to great consequences) and the law of entropy, they are not related in any special way. The law of entropy was understood by 1865, about 100 years before the first mathematics of chaos theory were published by Lorenz in in 1967. Returning to the topic at hand, if entropy were so terrible why would all of creation constantly strive towards and expand upon it? It is not currently known if entropy will continue to increase until the end of time. The answer rests on the still undetermined value of the Hubble constant which, when finally settled will tell us if the universe will continue to expand forever or eventually slow and then stop expanding before contracting in a "big crunch." For an easy to follow and interesting summary of the Hubble constant and its importance to physics see here. In either case, at least for now, disorder and chaos are clearly favored over order and thus I see my own chaotic ways as aligning more closely with the general structure of the universe at large. Obviously this is a bit of a tongue in cheek defense, but it does have a certain appeal. I am actually surprised that the law of entropy has not received nearly as much scrutiny or objection from the religiously minded as other scientific breakthroughs that fundamentally altered our view of the universe and man's place within it. Galileo's heresy of the earth revolving around the sun, would seem small potato's compared to the thought that the entire universe is continually descending toward chaos and disorder, two characteristics that are closely associated with the devil and all things evil. The law of entropy could be read as saying that the universe and all things within it are fundamentally evil and striving toward more evil at their core Now that I put it that way I see why there has been so little objection, most major religions do in fact believe that, so entropy no problem for them I guess...lol!

My defense of chaos should not be viewed as an attack on order, for it is definitely not intended as such. The importance and necessity of order in many circumstances is obvious, and I am not suggesting that one is superior or inferior to the other. Clearly both are important for different reasons. They each have different strengths and weaknesses and we can use the one to illuminate those differences in the other. Since my intent is to defend chaos I will share an example that I think highlights some of the strengths of chaos and at the same time reveals some of the, perhaps surprising, weaknesses of order. As a society we value order highly and have set up political and social systems that are intended in large part to maintain and expand upon it. If we do not recognize the weaknesses inherent in ordered systems, we may miss critical opportunities to improve them. Moreover we may implement policies which are doomed to failure because they are based on faulty assumptions about the nature of order and chaos.

Model House Example

Imagine someone presents you with a highly detailed, meticulously constructed small scale model home. And I mean highly detailed, the model house is constructed exactly like a fully furnished, actually lived in home. Not only does it have four walls and a roof but it has a basement, bedrooms, kitchen, living room, hallways, closets etc. It also has plumbing, wiring, insulation, drywall, carpeting, tile, couches, beds, dishes, appliances, etc. Basically it is an actually existing, lived in home, shrunk down to scale model size. They ask you to build a model of the same scale which exactly replicates the one they presented to you. At the same time a different person presents you with a box full of jumbled parts and pieces of an exactly as detailed but different scale model home, shows you a series of picture of what the final model should look like (both inside and outside), and then asks you to build it faithfully to those pictures using the box of parts and pieces provided. Which do you think would be easier, and more importantly, which do you think would result in a more accurate reproduction in the end? Hopefully it is obvious that in this example the completed model home is intended to serve as the example of an ordered system, and the jumbled box of parts and pieces as the corresponding chaotic one.

Without much thought it seems obvious that reproducing the already completed model home should be both easier and result in a more accurate representation in the end. After all, with the completed model you can see exactly how all the various parts and pieces are put together, where they each go, how many different similar and dissimilar ones there are, etc. With all that info, sourcing identical parts and pieces should be relatively simple and assembling them correctly is just a matter of referring to the completed model and doing things the exact same way. In contrast, with the box of jumbled parts and pieces you have no idea how they are to be put together, or how each part of the house is represented by the pieces and parts in the box. To take just one example, is the wall you see from the picture presented in the box as one piece or two or one hundred? Like assembling a puzzle each individual piece much be painstakingly matched up with similar (shape, texture, etc.) pieces until slowly the like pieces come together to form the final completed picture. In the case of a complex three dimensional structure like a house this process becomes much, much more complicated very quickly.

I forgot to mention one important constraint which has great bearing on the problem. It is not possible to "take apart" or deconstruct the completed model home in any way to see what it looks like on the inside. You can peer through the windows and open the outside doors but that is all. Because of this you will have to guess as to exactly how many rooms it has, and how they are layed out and what kind of rooms, and how the house is wired and plumged and insulated or not, etc. In fact there are a great many things you will be forced to guess ago. So, while your reproduction may look great from the outside and seem accurate it may wildly incorrect in many important ways. That same problem does not confront the chaotic model home in which all of the various parts and pieces are jumbled together in a box. Everything needed to accurately reproduce the home is in there and if the pictures provided are detailed enough, and you are skilled enough, eventually you sould be able to build an almost exact replica. This would never be the case with the completed model home, except perhaps by unbelievably improbable chance. So while it may in fact be easier to work from the completed model home, it will never allow for a more accurate reproduction which is the much more important end goal in most cases.

Many ordered systems are a lot like the completed model house in that they are "complete" systems and recalcitrant to deconstruction. Without the ability to deconstruct a thing and examine it "from the inside" we will never be able to accurately reproduce it. It seems we must be able to deorder things if we are to know how to build them back as ordered things. In other words we need to understand chaos if we hope to build order. It seems strange that order really has chaos to thank for its very existence. Or is it the other way around...lol!