There’s a common species of argument that I keep running into lately, and I’m beginning to suspect it’s not merely a rhetorical failing, but rather some deep structural consequence of entropy itself. It usually goes something like this:
Alice observes: “The median (or mean) of [X] is shifting in a concerning way!”
Bob replies: “Yeah, but look—there are still plenty of points way out in the tail!”
Here’s a slightly caricatured version of this dialogue:
Alice: “Dude, the median of the distribution is clearly shifting to the left. It’s a big deal.”
Bob: “OK, but you’re totally ignoring that one point way out on the right though.”
Alice: “No, you’re not hearing me. Statistically, the central tendency is moving left.”
Bob: “Wow, obsessed much? Your median fetish is erasing the lived experiences of tail-samplers. Do you even SEE the rightmost data point?”
Alice: “Bro, I get it, but the shift in centrality impacts EVERYTHING.”
Bob: “Yeah, except TAILS still exist, my guy. Check your tail-privilege. Afaict, the existence of tails disproves your whole doom and gloom scenario.”
Alice: “Literally begging you to look beyond your precious single data point—we’re talking distributions here.”
Bob: “Idk seems pretty centrality-normative to me. Have you considered tail-inclusivity, or are you tailphobic?”
Alice: “Just STOP.”
Both Alice and Bob are technically correct. Indeed, that’s often exactly what entropy does: as systems evolve and complexity increases, distributions frequently spread out, growing longer, heavier tails even as their central mass shifts somewhere new. This isn’t merely a rhetorical problem—it’s intrinsic to complex systems.
Consider some examples:
- Social media shortens attention spans (median effect), but some people still read extensive, nuanced articles (tail).
- Nutritional quality of diets declines broadly, yet a small, committed minority eat healthier than ever.
- Most journalism devolves into shallow clickbait, yet some investigative reporters produce deeper work than ever.
- Education standards slip on average, but elite schools remain stellar.
- Dating apps promote superficial relationships, but profound connections still occur at the fringes.
In each case, both the median-centered complaint and the tail-focused retort are completely valid, even simultaneously true. They’re fundamentally arguing past each other, trapped in what we might call a Median-Tail Equivocation. It’s as if both sides are insisting on different scales of importance without realizing the other side has a completely different scale in mind.
The Dialectic Trap
Modern argumentation implicitly assumes synthesis emerges through dialectics—if Alice and Bob argue enough, truth arises somewhere in between. But entropy challenges that assumption fundamentally: dialectics might not synthesize at all. Entropy may instead ensure increasing polarization and fragmentation, rather than neat Hegelian resolutions. Perhaps the truth isn’t found through dialectical synthesis, but by stepping orthogonally outside the centrality-tail duality entirely.
Attention Economics and Entropic Drift
Why fixate on tails or medians anyway? Attention economics rewards extremes—points on the tail—for their novelty, drama, or memetic fitness. Meanwhile, concerns around centrality persist precisely because they reflect a stable status quo, less dramatic yet more practically influential. Our attention itself is entropically pulled toward extremes, even though collective wellbeing still primarily rides on mundane averages.
Semantic Entropy and the Meta
There’s an even subtler kind of entropy at play here—semantic entropy. Language and conceptual models themselves fray at the edges as complexity increases. Terms like “average” or “typical” subtly shift their meanings mid-debate. As entropy rises, definitions degrade under argumentative stress, and discourse itself inevitably drifts toward chaos.
Maybe our epistemic impasse is simply a failure to grasp this inevitable duality. Perhaps we should embrace both centrality and tails explicitly—acknowledging each without privileging either. To say clearly, without frustration:
“Yes, exactly. Entropy is working as intended.”
Recognizing this could save us from endless arguments where Alice and Bob each think they’re catching the other in a fallacy, when really they’re just unwittingly describing different parts of the same evolving phenomenon. It’s not a bug—it’s entropy as a feature.