"Treat entropy as ignorance not physical disorder Vitalik Buterin offered a counter-intuitive reframing of entropy during a discussion on thermodynamics and civilization: "entropy is not like a physical statistic — it's actually how much you don't know." Using a two-jar gas thought experiment, he showed that mixing hot and cold gases simply increases the digits of information you lack about atom velocities, not some mystical irreversible force. This means "you can go from knowing more to knowing less" but not the reverse — except when a system (like a brain or an AI) actively collects and encodes information about its environment. For decision-makers, this reframe shifts the goal from "reduce chaos" to "increase relevant knowledge," which is a far more tractable and specific target. Source: Vitalik Buterin, Tech Panel Discussion, EAC vs DACK"