Posted: Jan 04, 2020 6:58 am
Thommo wrote:That jamest imagines chaos as some nonspecific lack of order, where order is some sort of quantifiable property (I'm inferring it must be quantifiable from the assertion that it exists in amounts, but there's just as much chance I'll be chastised for the inference as having it elucidated).
There's also quite a bit of fun to be had experimenting with what it means to be disordered (given the standard logical and mathematical conceptions of order and the dimensions they may apply to) and how one might measure it.
Suppose ABCD are four letters of the alphabet that are placed in their standard order.
Is BCDA as disordered as CDAB and DABC? Those are cycles of the original order, if we imagine that D -> A there's been no change at all.
Is DCBA as disorderly as possible? This is just a reversal of the ordering.
What about DABC or DBCA?
Obviously I'm anticipating this will all be read from left to right, by which I mean that the earliest character read is on the left of the page and the latest on the right with monotonic progression between. I don't know how I'd explain that if I lived in a universe which didn't have (apparently) ordered/orderable space and time dimensions.
ETA: What about orders of different lengths of sequences of letters? Is the empty sequence "" fully ordered, fully disordered, both or neither?
What about the sequence A? Is that more or less disordered than the empty sequence? Does it make sense to ask such a question about a single element?
ETA2: Thinking about it, based on past experience I expect this topic will now have run its course. So I may as well finish my thought about where I would guess this could have ended up.
How about comparing sequences of undifferentiated letters, AAAA with sequences of perfectly ordered ones ABCD? Which of those is more absolutely ordered? Is AAAA ordered at all? What if that is brought back around to god concepts? Is an unchanging god perfectly ordered (glossing over what it means for a god to be ordered at all, which is no small thing to ignore)? Is a god which is ordered on more things more or less perfectly ordered? Is a god which has thoughts and feelings changing its order, are all such states equally ordered? Does a god which is also a person inherently contain some disorder, and thus forfeit all claim to perfect order or absolute order?