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I have long thought that the highest purpose of engineering is to reduce entropy. Although he doesn't express it in those terms, I think Taleb is advocating something similar here. It's not anti-technology in the way that a lot of comments here seem to be interpreting it, but it probably is incompatible with the sort of techno-utopianism that is in vogue at the moment.


Paradoxically, Engineering practice is almost entirely entropy-positive. Turning electricity into heat and light (and minute electro-magnetic patterns, but that's insignificant).


Everything is entropy-positive. Some things, though, are less entropy-positive than others.




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