Plans and Entropy

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just... *do* things....they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are."

-the Joker from the Dark Knight

       The biggest problem with plans is they never account for all the variables. Experiments fall under the same pitfall. It's because the more complex a system is the more variables it has, the harder it is to control, and the harder it is to anticipate or predict outcomes. The more time that will elapse also greatly increases the uncertainty and unpredictability.

           Plans are an excellent coping mechanism for people afraid of not having control of their lives or fear losing said control, but as most of us are aware by now, plans can be destroyed in a moment and forced to be changed quite quickly. The truth is we really don't have a lot of control of our lives. Those unnaccounted variables, those unpredictable parts of those complex systems so many people want to control and put a leash on? 

They can change and transform into something completely paradigm-shifting and put all the powerful people's attempts to control things in the realm of trying to herd a rainstorm.

Any good scientist should understand that rigid and controlled models, experiments, games rarely have the depth of complexity and applicability to entirely apply to the shear complexity and extremely high variability of the real world or able to accurately predict outcomes within it.

In short, games and models always fail to control situations or predict outcomes, because it is impossible for a rigid model or game to account for all the variables of a fluid reality. Thinking that models and games can predict and control with precision complex real world systems is called the "ludic fallacy."

    Entropy, the inevitable decay of complex systems, all but guarantees that systems, institutions, and physical worlds in general will always have change and shifts in paradigms to account for that entropy and as a consequence of it.

 As a result, all plans, schemes, governments, agencies, people, corporations, schools, everything physical will break down and eventually cease and plans and schemes are just gonna go "poof". Like a magic trick.

The more complex the plan is, the more variables it has to account for, and more amount of time is needed to complete the plan, the more likely it is to fail. And fail they often do. Entropy makes long term massive plans exceedingly difficult to achieve.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't make plans. Plans are good blueprints and guidelines, but that's about all they are. The reality is you really don't have control of hardly anything. The powerful people in this world really only govern empires of dirt, blood, and dying systems in the long run...on one planet, orbiting one star, in a galaxy of  200 plus billion stars in a universe of a trillion galaxies in an existence of possibly countless universes.

We are like a speck of dust, which really just makes our world quite insignificant, and that speck of dust can be torched in seconds by cosmic forces.

As for me, I don't plan hardly at all. I eat, sleep, write, go to work, and do it over again every day. My plans in life were destroyed a while back, and from what I see in this world and how people treat each other and how its going right now I am just trying to reach my weekends and my beer days at this point. I don't see the point in making plans in this world. I don't really desire to live on this planet for a long time as it is. Long term plans unravel quickly. Short term plans are a little easier, but I must say I'd still be a better planner than Joe Biden. 

God forbid I end up living to be his senile age.