My father’s office was always a mess. His desk was covered with so many documents in so many layers there was only room to place something on the desk by piling it on top of something else. To an extent I inherited this I also kept messy rooms and desks. I realized this was because I’d treat objects almost as “to do” lists. If I got a letter and didn’t have the time to open it, I’d place it on my desk. I intended to get to it later but didn’t always. Things eventually piled up.
At some point I wondered what would be the easiest way to things organized with the least effort. My guess was to leave things slightly more organized with each interaction. The best way to do this was to clean up one unrelated thing every time I had to find or place something. Over a long enough time period this would bring any arbitrarily messy space to a clean, organized one.
Another way to look at this is that the difference between clean and messy can be extremely small. It’s the guy who throws away his trash and also one piece of litter vs. the guy who doesn’t. Over a long enough time period these differences compound to create highly visible effects. In a physical sense this is about entropy. If entropy is increasing slightly for each time unit, everything will eventually be disordered. If entropy is decreasing slightly for each time unit, everything will eventually be ordered. Let’s call this entropic velocity.
So the difference between positive entropic velocity and negative entropic velocity can create highly visible, divergent, emergent effects over the right time scales. This concept probably only applies to things which are capable of accumulating state over time. If your immune system cannot fully fight off a pathogen, even if only by a little, you’re eventually going to develop serious, potentially life-threatening health problems (e.g. gangrene, sepsis). If you are extroverted and seek out meeting new people, you can grow your networks extremely wide over time. If gravity slightly exceeds the centripetal force from angular rotation, matter can condense into a planetary object.
This phenomena does influence some important human outcomes. If you are earning slightly more than you spend, you can accumulate wealth. If you are saving with compound interest, you can grow wealth exponentially. Over time scales of 30-50 years, the emergent effects can be profound (e.g. top 10% vs bottom 10% of wealth). There are probably other human outcomes for which this is true, and you probably want to be on the right side of entropy for it.