The Heat Sink

Girard and Thermodynamics

I found the theory of René Girard fascinating. Peter Thiel brings him up from time to time; he’s clearly someone who saw the source code of human behavior.

Girard claimed that humans function by mimicking each other. But that mimicking eventually creates conflict. People mimic until the pressure becomes too high, and a scapegoat is needed to release it.

I always wondered: How could you ever prove that? How do you measure it? Is it actually applicable today?

I know the answer. It’s not psychology. It’s thermodynamics.

What Girard calls “mimicking” is actually us minimizing prediction errors.

The best way to minimize error is to copy. This isn’t just a human quirk; it’s fundamental to the universe. Protons and neutrons bind this way. Atoms bind this way. Energy follows the path of least resistance to conserve itself.

We don’t scapegoat because we are evil. We scapegoat because the system is overheating and physics demands a release valve.

Girard was simply observing thermodynamics through history.

But there’s a specific phase in this thermodynamics that explains violence better than just “overheating.” It’s rigidity.

If we copy each other to minimize error, the system eventually becomes too uniform - like a crystal lattice. Once that happens, energy can no longer dissipate properly. The system loses its ability to adapt to new gradients.

When the structure is that locked, heat can’t flow out. So it starts dissipating inwards. Variance increases within each individual element until the structure inevitably collapses.

This explains Girard’s “Crisis of Undifferentiation.” We don’t fight because we are unpredictable. We fight because we become so hyper-aligned and rigid that the system has no release valve left but total fracture.

The scapegoat, as Girard calls it, is just a heat sink. It’s where the system dumps entropy so it doesn’t melt down.

But looking forward, the physics are changing.

The better the flow, the better the bindings. The universe has shown us this. When flow becomes stable and continuous, prediction errors become small and harmonic. The bindings between parts grow strong. They form the fundamental structures of matter.

Eventually, the flow will become good enough. As we move toward that stability, Girard’s theory of conflict will be less likely to manifest.

It will take a while before we get there. But until then, the Girardians will be right.