The TEDx Society at our school organised an independent TED event on the 20th of May 2023 with an open invite for students, teachers, and select guest speakers to present a Ted Talk of their choice. This was the first year that such an event was held at OSC, marking the inaugural year of an annual TEDx event.
Ever since Mr. Luvinzu, our Language and Literature teacher at OSC, approached me with the prospect of giving a TED talk, I have been sold on the idea. Without any restrictions on topics that can be covered, assuming you upheld the ethics and norms pertaining to public speech, it was essentially a blank canvas for me to paint my vivid love for physics. And that was how quickly I knew it would be physics, straight from the start – although I must admit I did entertain a brief affair with psychology before dismissing the thought.
I must admit, there was a slightly selfish reasoning underneath the overshadow of my interest in physics – the potential for bragging rights on my university application. I know I know, but you cannot blame me for striking two birds with one stone – that’s called being smart. After all the talk about university and “the next big step”, this was a step in the right direction.
Planning & Revision
Now as much as my love for physics cannot be expressed in simple terms, I had to reluctantly factor in my target audience – a pool of fellow students ranging from middle schoolers to high schoolers to teachers, all falling on a gradient of scientific literacy (which I suspected to be heavy on the non-literate, at least in the context of theoretical physics). Hence I needed a concept that was not only engaging, but one that could be intricately interwoven with everyday life – or, even better, one that can give meaning to life itself. Something that can be understood both scientifically and by examining our own lives. And maybe while I’m at it, instill a bit of enthusiasm for physics to ensure a class size greater than 3 in upcoming years.
And that is how I landed on Entropy – the concept of chaos. Just reading that phrase itself strikes a bit of childlike curiosity even in the smartest of us – and that is what made it perfect. A concept that is widely misunderstood in physics, even by the most experienced professors, yet one that has its root in every action and event that occurs around us – even the ticking of time. Bingo!
Yet of course, in a limited time frame, explaining all this can seem overwhelming – and what would be the message my audience would take back? After all, my talk, to be effective, has to have a singular punchline that is the sole premise of the talk itself.
Entropy is the concept that chaos is increasing all around us – and it is the very core of the universe, the purpose of it, if you may. It entails that everything happens, including the events in our lives, to increase disorder in the universe. Yet when I was researching on the topic, I had the stark realization that we humans fabricate our lives in the exact opposite way – into a boring repetitive order that we perform without question or purpose each day. If the universe is meant to increase chaos, that means by extension that our existence also follows the same purpose. Yet our lives seem to get more boring by the day.
There I found my central tension for the talk – the purpose of our existence on one end of the guitar string, and our susceptibility to lead boring lives on the other. And if I strum the string just right, I would have a killer symphony of a talk. Bingo!
tedx script
Introduction
Science – a land of incomprehensible theories and nerds. Yet it holds the beauty, the manual and the answers of the entire universe. Many of us foresee science’s perfectly interwoven tales because we turned poetry into an enigmatic, illegible code. But it does not have to be that way. It can be intuitive and comprehensible – even providing an answer to one of the most esoteric questions that all of us at one juncture of our lives have unconsciously asked ourselves – what is the meaning of life? And with a bit of science, you’ll see its answer is as beautiful as its simplicity.
Entropy
To answer such an arcane question, we must look towards a fundamental feature of reality – entropy. It is the concept that the universe has to move towards disorder – a state of high chaos, so to speak. It is an unshakable law in the world of physics – it is what gives time a direction, what causes glaciers to melt and what causes us to exist. But this where the disconnection between science and understanding appears and the links so hard to see. If all reality does is move towards disorder, how did something as intricately organized as a human being come about? Think about it – we are extremely ordered, from all the systems we have – respiratory, digestive, etc to all the processes we perform – reproduction to growth. Aren’t we then, an example of the reality moving into lower entropy?
Entropocentric Principle
Okay, let’s think of entropy differently, the disorder in the universe as a whole should increase but there could exist regions of lower disorder. We can use a phenomenon we experience here in Sri Lanka: cyclones. In a cyclone you have a large area of high speed air – a large area of chaos/disorder. But in the center you have the eye – an area of calm and order. And within these regions of calm and order, life is able to form. This model was theorized by Stephon Alexander, a theoretical physicist at Brown’s University – the entropocentric principle. He thought of these regions, the eyes in the cyclone as little cosmic biospheres of low entropy lead to ordered life. And within these low entropy regions, the perfect balance of geological and biological reactions needed for life to form are allowed to take place. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Why would the universe go out of its way, almost creating a loophole in an unshakeable law, to allow for life to form? What does it entail about the reason behind our existence?
If we were created ordered but reality is moving towards disorder, it could only mean one thing – we were created orderly to make disorder.
Entropy: What does it mean for life?
One does not need to go further than history to see this parallel of mankind living the laws of entropy. Born into a planet that was simple and orderly – we took the limestone in the ground and turned it into pyramids of Giza, we took the marble in the ground and made it into the Taj Mahal, and we took sand and gravel and cement to make the concrete used to build the Colosseum. And look at our cities and civilizations now – metals turned into skyscrapers, crude oil into roads, water into energy, rubber into tyres. Everything we have created, terraformed and produced is all an example of disorder.
We took ordered simpleness and turned it into complex disorder – we are paying our dues to the universe.
What does it all mean?
But what does it mean for life? And more importantly, why should we care? The danger lies in ignoring those questions more than answering them. We often find ourselves living the same repetitive ordered lives everyday – we wake up at the same time every morning, eat the same cereal for breakfast, wear the same outfits, go to work and do the same monotonous task, come back home and watch the same thing on TV. We have made our lives into exactly what we were not made to do. We are made for disorder, to go out and be creative and use our imagination, to build unorthodox structures from the materials underneath the ground,
Conclusion
It’s poetic, we were created orderly to be disorderly. A simple answer to our toughest question – an understanding of science leading to an understanding of ourselves. And a personalized answer for everyone, because science has given each of us a unique way to be disorderly. So when you often find yourselves asking that question – what is the meaning of my life – you should accept it positively. It’s science’s calling, knocking at the door to your consciousness, making sure you are paying your dues. As Rumi said, “You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop” And life is about taking that drop and turning it into an ocean of disorder to inspire the person next to you.
tedx talk video
Final thoughts
I came out of the talk extremely satisfied with my delivery – although I regret the poor start I got off to. For a science-oriented talk projected to a general audience, I thought I hit the sweet spot of between 6 – 9 minutes – not too long to bore anyone, yet not too short to leave people without a message. And with the compliments I received from my peers and members of the audience afterwards, I can conclude that it was a mission accomplished.
Entropy. Isn’t it beautiful? Our lives created to make disorder, to create beauty in a canvas of mundanity. As I wrote my ideas and formulated my talk, I realized that the way I see my future is also rotten with boringness. There is so much to live for, to fight for, to earn for – why should I decide what that is now? I know where this ship is headed, calm seas or storms, I will bring the fight, and with it the disorder, wherever this beautiful life takes me.