Sometimes, like tonight, when I’m up late and writing before hitting the sack, I seek out music on my cable television. Sometimes it’s live performance, sometimes it’s those strange music channels way up in the 900s on my television guide. Tonight, I happened upon a concert by the rock band Muse. Being the sort that is involved occasionally in public policy, I was struck by the concert opening. This was a live performance in a gigantic stadium in Europe, and the opening audio-visual experience was designed to take over the psyche of the crowd. It’s a time honored method of getting the crowd whipped up and into a live rock performance. There were likely somewhere around 90,000 fans in this stadium, waiting to be blown away by a high energy rock and roll performance. When it’s designed well, it can set the tone for the entire concert.
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This one struck me, though. The crowd, at first frenzied in anticipation for the main act to take the stage, was struck into contemplative silence as a female voice came over the speakers. It struck me as particularly akin to Big Brother. The female voice was monotone, mesmerizing, and digitized.
All natural and technological processes proceed in such a way the availability of all remaining energy decreases. In all energy exchanges if no energy enters or leaves an isolated system the entropy of that system increases. Energy continuously flows from where concentrated to becoming dispersed or spread out. Wasted and useless. New energy cannot be created and high grade energy then destroyed. An economy based on endless waste is UNSUSTAINABLE! [GIANT EXPLOSION AND PYROTECHNICS]
https://vimeo.com/193333105
This is a clear and obvious bastardization of the Laws of Thermodynamics. Yeah, it’s also an awesome way to whip up energy in a crowd. But the underlying message—and the political command—is to resist politics based on energy. The final sentence is absolutely not supported by any of the following:
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First law of thermodynamics: When energy passes as work, as heat, or with matter, into or out from a system, the system’s internal energy changes in accord with the law of conservation of energy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible.
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Second law of thermodynamics: In a natural thermodynamic process, the sum of the entropies of the interacting thermodynamic systems increases. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible.
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Third law of thermodynamics: The entropy of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero. With the exception of non-crystalline solids (glasses) the entropy of a system at absolute zero is typically close to zero, and is equal to the logarithm of the product of the quantum ground states.
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The political speech deliberately conflates the definition of waste in the First Law with the idea of waste economics. It’s likely that 98% of those in the crowd didn’t notice, but this type of argument is common among those who use pseudoscience and sophistry to explain their high-minded ideals in the face of real-world failures.
Great performance. Awesome show. Terrible argument against utilizing low-cost, high-efficiency fossil fuel energy to run our economy. Hopefully, some of the more aware members of the audience caught the irony of Big Brother speaking to them at a rock concert to advance the Big Government agenda.
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