sniffnoy | Backwards temperature metaphors

Instead of saying "the trail has gone cold", we should say "the trail has gone warm".

We tend to conceptualize recent things as hot, and as cooling off over time. But, cold things also return to room temperature over time. If you've deliberately chilled your drink for instance, then if you wait too long it goes warm, not cold! So, if we restrict ourselves to that level, then either metaphor works. We could speak of recent things as cold and as going warm over time.

Now I'm not saying we should do that in general! But "cold" and "hot" have further meanings that can be used to select between them. Cold is low-entropy, structured, preserves information. Hot is high-entropy, unstructured, destroys information -- "you're not dead until you're warm and dead".

So, a recent trail of information should be thought of as cold, not as hot. And if you wait too long and let it get disrupted by the environment, it hasn't cooled off -- it's warmed up, like ice cream you took too long to eat. Cold preserves; cold is the state one should want, regarding an information trail!