combatentropy
Veteran
To any who are willing, please share the story behind your username.
Combat Entropy. It's just a fancy way to say, "Fight chaos." It is a slogan, that I made up as a short pep talk, to myself.
Years ago at the office at a large company I overheard two coworkers discussing a work project that I believed would end badly. But they weren't on my team, and I was just a drone, so I said nothing. The ill-conceived plan lumbered on and eventually snowballed until it started to involve me, and I wished that I had spoken up. It still had to be put down, but it was stickier by then and a lot of time and energy had been wasted.
This thing happened more than once. It is against my nature to confront people. I would rather just find a way to make it work. But over time I saw that it is more giving to try to offer guidance, albeit gently. Lots of you, with different temperaments, have no problem doing this, but for me it is always hard.
Anyway, the phrase "combat entropy" came to mind, which is unusual because I normally don't like to use big words. I like clear writing. One of my favorite books is The Elements of Style. But one thing I liked about the phrase was that it sounded like "combat infantry," which helps remind me that it's going to be hard, like going to war --- not that I think of myself as at war with another person, but at war with a bad idea. Anyway, I needed a unique domain name for my personal website (www.combatentropy.com, yeah you can see I've put a lot into it over the years). Also maybe I wanted to allude to my side interests in physics and information theory, where "entropy" is term, to anyone who might get it.
It sounds like this could be arrogant and obnoxious, me thinking I know better than someone else. But again I often still don't speak up, and when I do, I try to do it lightly. If they don't show interest, then I let it go --- unless it is something that will come back and bite me and I'll have to deal with over and over again. On the Internet I can wind up like that guy in the XKCD comic, but over the years I've tried to budget my time more wisely.
About a year ago I came upon this quote by Steven Pinker: "The [...] ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order." It was in a whole article about the concept, Battling Entropy: Making Order of the Chaos in Our Lives.
---
Anyway, all of you who didn't use your real names, your usernames are a perennial source of curiosity to me, and it's driving me crazy. Even for the ones that are sort of self-explanatory, it still might be interesting to know why you chose that, of all possibilities, as your username.
Combat Entropy. It's just a fancy way to say, "Fight chaos." It is a slogan, that I made up as a short pep talk, to myself.
Years ago at the office at a large company I overheard two coworkers discussing a work project that I believed would end badly. But they weren't on my team, and I was just a drone, so I said nothing. The ill-conceived plan lumbered on and eventually snowballed until it started to involve me, and I wished that I had spoken up. It still had to be put down, but it was stickier by then and a lot of time and energy had been wasted.
This thing happened more than once. It is against my nature to confront people. I would rather just find a way to make it work. But over time I saw that it is more giving to try to offer guidance, albeit gently. Lots of you, with different temperaments, have no problem doing this, but for me it is always hard.
Anyway, the phrase "combat entropy" came to mind, which is unusual because I normally don't like to use big words. I like clear writing. One of my favorite books is The Elements of Style. But one thing I liked about the phrase was that it sounded like "combat infantry," which helps remind me that it's going to be hard, like going to war --- not that I think of myself as at war with another person, but at war with a bad idea. Anyway, I needed a unique domain name for my personal website (www.combatentropy.com, yeah you can see I've put a lot into it over the years). Also maybe I wanted to allude to my side interests in physics and information theory, where "entropy" is term, to anyone who might get it.
It sounds like this could be arrogant and obnoxious, me thinking I know better than someone else. But again I often still don't speak up, and when I do, I try to do it lightly. If they don't show interest, then I let it go --- unless it is something that will come back and bite me and I'll have to deal with over and over again. On the Internet I can wind up like that guy in the XKCD comic, but over the years I've tried to budget my time more wisely.
About a year ago I came upon this quote by Steven Pinker: "The [...] ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order." It was in a whole article about the concept, Battling Entropy: Making Order of the Chaos in Our Lives.
---
Anyway, all of you who didn't use your real names, your usernames are a perennial source of curiosity to me, and it's driving me crazy. Even for the ones that are sort of self-explanatory, it still might be interesting to know why you chose that, of all possibilities, as your username.
Last edited:
