The Fable of the Thermodynamically-Provable Tortoise

Once upon a time, there was a tortoise and a hare. The tortoise took upon itself the heavy work of transporting its shell around. Yet the hare did not take a similar workload itself.

Over time, it became known among the animals, that the tortoise was very good at selecting parties, and the hare was not. For the tortoise would not go to any event, unless it was worth the trouble and effort to carry its heavy shell to that event and enjoy it. Whereas the hare would hop and skip helter-skelter, moving around from one event to another, never truly committing to one party or another.

Thus, the other animals came to rely on the advice of the tortoise of how to know the best parties in the forest.

The proof of the correctness of the tortoise was dependent on the work the tortoise would need, to move its shell around. Anyone could check that indeed, the shell of the tortoise was heavy and it would require real work and effort to move it. And because it required real work and effort, this meant that where the tortoise was, was most likely where the best party in the forest was.

That is what we mean by thermodynamic consensus.

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This fable is released under a CC-BY 3.0 Unported license.