What should the Chancellor do about the energy crisis at the Budget? Four things: 1. Further reduce electricity costs 2. Fix gas prices for several years 3. Promote short term energy efficiency 4. Lock in incentives to electrify We have a new Nesta blog covering this:

Thank you! That is a very good point - gradually getting worse but not enough to completely break, yet

Thank you!

Oh wow, that is an amazing way of putting it!

I’m very much anti applying natural science concepts to social sciences wholesale, but I think they can sometimes be useful as prompts for thinking about issues

It’s very much intended at that level - certainly not proposing this as an analytical tool. Way I see is that there may be some kind of social force that has some features that look a bit like entropy. So the analogy might help to understand and then later (if it’s helpful) better define that force

That’s very kind, and interesting, thanks! Hysteresis is already used in economics - specifically to describe a short term rise in unemployment causing long term effects. But really interesting to consider whether both concepts could be useful more widely…

(I read that as a child, and always wondered how they measured that)

Once the second-most photographed clock in Britain

Omg. There’s separately a comic volume and an electronica EP?! Also telling that Entropy in the UK was right there and I missed it

Entropy Britain: things can only get better *if you put the effort in*

I think the implications, mainly, are on fiscal policy and direction. Britain still has loads of assets and people who can turn it around. Give them enough funding - actually confront that fiscal challenge - and set a forwards-facing direction. People are good, mostly

But I don’t think we should take this as pre-ordained. Entropy can be reduced, and Britain has turned itself around before. I don’t think it requires shock therapy though - we don’t need another Brexit or some kind of unchecked AI reckoning

It worries me a lot that so many people I talk to would not consider becoming a civil servant. And it worries me that so many leaders - the ones who might be able to inject some outside energy - seem to quickly conclude it’s an impossible task

So far, so familiar. No points for highlighting consequences of austerity in Bluesky. But the bit I think entropy can help elucidate most is the idea that these problems get continually harder to turn around. Partly because these problems get bigger, but partly that people just… give up

The examples I start with are: 1. The constant decline in some public services (like SEND), where services being overstretched creates even more pressure on them 2. Our traditionalism about the economy, and reluctance to build anything new or embrace new industries we’re actually good at

Obviously you can’t apply this, a physics concept, literally to a country. And Britain is most certainly not a closed system. But entropy might be a useful way to think about how parts of British society seem to gradually decline, how that gets harder to reverse, and what we might do about it