Chapter 83: Thermodynamic Ethics

Can ethical evaluation be given a quantitative dimension? This chapter introduces the ethical defect functional — the structural distance between an actual policy and the optimal admissible policy — and shows that admissible policies minimize defect under perspective transport. The analogy with thermodynamics is precise: defect plays the role of free energy, the ethical arrow points toward coherence, and the second law of thermodynamic ethics states that admissible policies do not increase defect along any relevant loop. The result is not a reduction of ethics to physics but a structural parallel that sharpens the non-harm constraint of Test 4 .