> [Freedoms] are not being eroded by irresistible laws of nature.
Yes they are.
Without infusions of external energy—in this case citizens who work to keep their rights—entropy increases, complex structures rot and crumble, and order fades into disorder. If checks and balances aren't actively maintained, they slowly disappear.
It takes lots of effort to maintain a legal framework that, from the cops' perspective, mostly makes it harder to close cases where the suspect is "obviously" guilty. So first they start ignoring little bits of it to speed things up. Then they ignore bigger things, and entropy increases further. The fewer legal barriers there are to a conviction, the less ordered we can call the system. After more of this erosion, we reach the most disordered state of all: This guy has a gun, so you do what he says or else.
ΔS >= 0, in our social systems just as much as in the universe, because they can't escape the limits of the system they're embedded in.
>> [Freedoms] are not being eroded by irresistible laws of nature.
>Yes they are.
No, They are not. Trying to apply a physical law to a philosophical construct is folly. Freedom has no mass, it's an idea.
I'm familiar with entropy. You could just as easily say that the power structures in this story seeking to steal from the weak are being eroded as well. They, too, must be maintained. Entropy is a force that both sides of society must contend with, and has little to do with my argument as gravity.
Don't get me wrong, I see the appeal of the application. To think that horrible things done by humanity are no ones fault. To think that it's forgivable to acquiesce and accept evil as inevitable. I've surely succumb to it myself throughout my life.
However, evil and maliciousness can be fought by the same agents that perpetrate it. Small acts by many individuals add up to greatness (NASA) or horror (War).
Evil will never be eradicated, it's part of human nature. It can be held in check by those who seek to do good, and throwing up hands and saying, "It has nothing to do with me. Forces of nature." is not some virtuous way out. It's not some noble intellectual loophole that you understand shit happens and are above the squalor. It's an insidious brand of laziness that I see far too much of from in a crowd as empowered as those on Hackernews.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Possibly[1] Edmund Burke
No one said anything about condoning evil. And the quote you end with is exactly what I'm saying.
> Trying to apply a physical law to a philosophical construct is folly.
That's not what I'm doing. A government is not a philosophical construct—it's a system of rules enforced by living, concrete people, by physical means, against other living, concrete people. For the same reason that your house gets messy or your car might fall apart if you don't take it to the shop, civil liberties that take a lot of law-enforcement effort to respect and seem to help the bad guys won't survive if cops ignore them with impunity.
Yes they are.
Without infusions of external energy—in this case citizens who work to keep their rights—entropy increases, complex structures rot and crumble, and order fades into disorder. If checks and balances aren't actively maintained, they slowly disappear.
It takes lots of effort to maintain a legal framework that, from the cops' perspective, mostly makes it harder to close cases where the suspect is "obviously" guilty. So first they start ignoring little bits of it to speed things up. Then they ignore bigger things, and entropy increases further. The fewer legal barriers there are to a conviction, the less ordered we can call the system. After more of this erosion, we reach the most disordered state of all: This guy has a gun, so you do what he says or else.
ΔS >= 0, in our social systems just as much as in the universe, because they can't escape the limits of the system they're embedded in.