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My second LSD trip was all about this idea. The entirety of the universe heads in the direction of disorganization and life is the only process that does the op
by KhoomeiK 7y ago
My second LSD trip was all about this idea. The entirety of the universe heads in the direction of disorganization and life is the only process that does the opposite. Life is a tool by which the universe organizes itself. There's parallels of this idea everywhere (Father Sky, Mother Earth).
At least that's what I thought until I did a lot more reading over the next couple days after my trip and discarded the idea. Entropy and how life interacts with it turned out to be significantly more complicated than I thought.
- pgt 7y agoLife decreases entropy within its area of influence while increasing entropy outside its borders / cell walls / areas of influence.
- pgt 7y agoYou could call life an entropy pump.
- ahartmetz 7y agoYou were not wrong, though. Life produces more entropy around it (it consumes energy) to lower its own entropy. Organisms are islands of lower entropy. Paraphrased from what a physicist doing "systems biology" (more or less: biology from first principles) said to me. I have also had a few lectures about thermodynamics.
- elevenoh 7y agoWell put
- platz 7y agoIf you have a glass of separated half coffee on the bottom and cream on the top, the complexity temporarily increases as the two halfs mix. Then the complexity goes down again, as it becomes uniformly mixed. Yet, the coffee and cream are not alive.
- hippich 7y agoGranted, I am total noob in that topic, but how your example of cream and coffee mixing and reaching equilibrium different from a cell receiving an electrical spike pushing it to do its thing until it is done and settling at some equilibrium? Is cell is not alive?
- sooheon 7y agoWhat are the chances of coffee and cream molecules being arranged in just that configuration without the intervention of life forms with caffeine addictions and ceramics factories?
- platz 7y agowhat are the chances of an initial state of the universe with extremely low entropy? the low entropy starting initial condition is the same in both cases, the glass is meant to be an analogy of the big bang.
- sooheon 7y ago> Then the complexity goes down again, as it becomes uniformly mixed. This part is incorrect. It requires the intervention of energy by motivated life forms to to un-mix a mixture of coffee and cream, therefore it is very high entropy.
- kgwgk 7y ago“Disorder — A Cracked Crutch For Supporting Entropy Discussions” http://entropysite.oxy.edu/cracked_crutch.html http://entropysite.oxy.edu/cracked_crutch.html