Self-organised criticality and Jaynes' entropy

Self-organised criticality depends on a system with regions away from equilibrium in which catastrophic events or avalanches occur when states change. Jaynes entropy requires the maintenance of equilibrium as states change. Both allow the prediction of probability distributions to describe the occurrence of events. Both predict the Gutenberg-Richter law on the number of earthquakes exceeding a given magnitude and yet they are based on these different views of physics. These conflicting views are considered and the relevance to civil engineering applications discussed. It is concluded that there are necessary judgments to be made and justified in using these methods to predict probability distributions in professional practice.