# Entropy at the Beginning of Time, 1.2

Logical arrow of time, 10.2.2

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If at the beginning, the universe had a high entropy, it was at a macrostate corresponding to many indistinguishable microstates.

That description is self-contradictory, because “two macroscopically-indistinguishable microstates” is meaningful only if they were once macroscopically distinguishable before.

That is not possible for the state(s) at the beginning of the universe, because at that moment, there was no “before”.

So it is meaningless to label the universe’s beginning macrostate as “a state corresponding to many indistinguishable microstates”.

Instead, we should label the universe’s beginning state as “a state corresponding to one single microstate”.

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For example, assume that the universe was at the macrostate $\displaystyle{A}$ at the beginning; and the $\displaystyle{A}$ is corresponding to two macroscopically-indistinguishable microstates $\displaystyle{a_1}$ and $\displaystyle{a_2}$.

Although microstates $\displaystyle{a_1}$ and $\displaystyle{a_2}$ are macroscopically-indistinguishable, we can still label them as “two” microstates, because they have 2 different histories — history paths that are macroscopically distinguishable.

However, for the beginning of the universe, there was no history. So it is meaningless to label the state as “a macrostate with two (or more) possible microstates”.

So we should label that state not only as one single macrostate but also as one single microstate.

In other words, that state’s entropy value should be defined to be zero.

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If in some special situation, it is better to label the universe’s beginning state as “a state with non-zero entropy”, that state will still have the smallest possible entropy of the universe throughout history.

So it is not possible for the universe to have “a high entropy” at the beginning.

— Me@2022-01-08 02:38 PM

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