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Engine Equation

Engine Equation

Warning

Over a year old. May be outdated

In thermodynamics, an engine turns one or more forms of energy into mechanical force or motion. In software, engine gets vaguer. It just means the core part of a complex system. If more than two programs use the same piece, you can pack it into a reusable library and call it the engine, sort of. But can we define it better?

I'd define an engine as a mathematical equation that takes asset and time and turns them into utility.

Engine⇔f(resource, time)→utility\text{Engine} \Leftrightarrow f(\text{resource}, ~\text{time}) \to \text{utility}

An engine eats assets and time and turns them into something else useful. Useful is entirely subjective to humans, the same way information is defined as useful data. Some examples.

  • Economies are engines that take assets such as labor, capital, natural resources, and time and produce goods and services, which can be seen as a measure of utility.
  • Militaries are engines that take assets such as personnel, equipment, resources, and time and produce security and defense, which can be seen as a measure of utility.
  • Governments are engines that take resources such as taxes, labor, and natural resources and use them over time to give citizens goods and services such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
  • Companies are engines of various assets (), like capital, labor, and natural resources, and use them over time to produce goods or services they can sell for profit.
  • Universities are engines that take various assets, such as faculty, staff, students, and resources, and use them over time to produce education and research, and utility such as improved job prospects and higher levels of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

The interesting part is engines are just functions, so they can recurse inside each other. That links to , a fictional science that uses statistical analysis to predict the behavior of large groups of people and develop strategies to shape the course of history. The universe is a kind of -engine that runs on the collective behavior of large groups over time.

Eventually the universe will be a tree of chain-reacting engines, with the Big Bang as the primal origin and heat as the final output. Physically, an engine is the path entropies flow through.

Eternal order is prescribed by the sacred engine. all things flow from the sacred engine, all things in their place, all passengers in their section, all water flowing. all heat rising, pays homage to the sacred engine, in its own particular preordained position...

-- Snowpiercer (2013)

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