A situation that is degrading to chaos

Entropy

Seriously... what a great word. I do not think that great words get the recognition they deserve...
From Wiktionary (the third definition is probably the most useful and the one referenced in the title of this post):

(thermodynamics, countable)

• strictly thermodynamic entropy. A measure of the amount of energyphysical system which cannot be used to do mechanical work. in a
• A measure of the disorder present in a system (now becoming obsolete in chemistry [1]).
• The capacity factor for thermal energy that is hidden with respect to temperature [2].
• The dispersal of energy; how much energy is spread out in a process, or how widely spread out it becomes, at a specific temperature. [3]

(statistics, information theory, countable) A measure of the amount of information and noise present in a signal.

(uncountable) The tendency of a system that is left to itself to descend into chaos.