better swap lives with money here
1) the author thinks there are obvious ways to decrease the entropy of the coin flipping example and expects these to be so obvious to the reader that they don't need enumerating to exemplify the approach he has in mind
or
2) the author is pointing out that in the coin flipping example the entropy is already so close to zero as to render efforts to reduce it absurd, and believes that this is so self evident as to need no explanation
In other words, the entropy of this article is ~ln(2). I suspect some energy could be usefully devoted to reducing it.
Example - engineering teams can be obsessed with introducing new variables to a sufficiently stable system with the intention to improve stability. But in turn, reduce stability due to inaccurate impressions of stability of the new variables.
This approach generates a bias against change, but in many situations this bias is helpful. This allows engineering teams time to observe process outcome distribution over a longer duration, improving the data backing any process change decisions.
Edit: added explanation
* heads, no issues
* tails, no issues
The articles says this:
"The way to lower that maximum is to bring N to a number as close as possible to one. In addition to reducing the number of possible outcomes, we can further reduce entropy in any given process by reducing the probability of every undesired outcome,[...]"
which applies to a reproducible process. In the case of coin flipping, the desired reproducibility refers to having no issues, so N should be as close as possible to 2".
(the macrostate vs microstate distinction could be introduced but it would complicate the argument)
Any system's future state is not entirely predictable. We determine actions and their impact on current entropy while taking decisions.
But to the point of the article entropy only exists when external factors are introduced. Like new talent or tech paradigms changing the landscape of a startup.
