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I think life is just an accelerator of entropy, and thus favored by it. The meaning of life is to end the universe sooner.
by anken 3y ago
I think life is just an accelerator of entropy, and thus favored by it. The meaning of life is to end the universe sooner.
- packetlost 3y agoHow is life an accelerator of entropy when it literally exists to centralize/condense energy and create ordered feedback systems?
- keyme 3y agoLife exists as a way to release trapped energy that simpler processes weren't able to. Look at us, releasing fission ennergy trapped in heavy atoms by supernovae.
- packetlost 3y agooh that makes sense
- water-your-self 3y agoWhat about photosynthesis?
- TeMPOraL 3y agoPhotons go in, stuff gets rearranged, waste heats gets produced and expelled to the atmosphere.
- LASR 3y agoLife, like any other physical process, provides additional pathways to increase entropy. Otherwise that process wouldn't have a gradient to go through.
- nh23423fefe 3y agoEvery living thing radiates black body radiation which is higher entropy than sunlight.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThermodynamics says that you can't decrease entropy in a closed system. Whatever life does, however it does, like any process, will not decrease entropy - and generally, will increase it over time. That life seems to generate and maintain order locally only tells you that it shoves the entropy it produces somewhere else, out of sight (ultimately it becomes thermal radiation). It's like with a heat pump: it does not generate cold, it merely transports heat against a gradient, and in doing so, adds more heat of its own. It may seem like it creates cold, but that's only because you're sitting in front of the cold end, while the hot end goes to ground or atmosphere - i.e. a thermal sink so large that your contribution to it is almost unmeasurable.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoIf this was true, the universe would be teeming with life.
- nh23423fefe 3y agoWrong. Life dissipates energy and thus increases dS/dt. The converse isn't applicable.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoIf life was an entropy accelerant…
- quirk 3y agoI'm reading Nick Lane's book The Vital Question right now and he discusses this in some ways. Life escapes entropy at the local level, but increases entropy in its environment. At least this is what I think he is saying, I'm about 1/3 of the way through and it's pretty dense for a popular science book.
- Jerrrry 3y ago>Life escapes entropy at the local level, but increases entropy in its environment. Yep, it _allows_ for increasing localized complexity due to a temperature gradient - without a temperature gradient, no (useful) work can be done. Complexity can then exhibit emergent behaviors/properties that further reduce the flow of entropy (locally). This tight feedback loop can (but not necessarily must) result in higher and higher orders of complexity, which eventually produce specialized systems that resemble proto-life. Once a reproducible mechanism exists (either directly reproducible or through a few sub-steps), one notable emergent property is self-selection due to limited resources, which adds to the exponential acceleration of excellence. But it's all local, as the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to the whole system - Earth isn't a closed system, it is a gradient, as we bask in the sunlight. Gravity is simultaneously the reason entropy increases globally, and the reason it can decrease locally; pulling us (for 'free') diagonally into the fourth dimension of space-time.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> But it's all local, as the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to the whole system - Earth isn't a closed system, it is a gradient, as we bask in the sunlight. Sunlight is one thing, but I feel the key point is, Earth with life on it increases entropy faster than the one without, even with the same sunlight flux. The way I've been imagining for some years now is a bit "bottom-up": life is electrochemical nanotech; every tick of any piece has to increase entropy or keep it the same - but as those pieces assemble to form increasingly complex life forms, at every level of complexity you can find loops that do the simple job of "let's take this excess entropy and move it over there". Out of the protein bundle. Out of the cell. Out of the body. Into water, or air. > Gravity is simultaneously the reason entropy increases globally, and the reason it can decrease locally; pulling us (for 'free') diagonally into the fourth dimension of space-time. For that I'll need an ELI5 one of these days; I still can't make it click in my head just how is it that gravity (and static magnets) can pull stuff seemingly "for free".
- water-your-self 3y agoLife is not an accelerator. It takes energy and produces order from it, inefficiantly but order still. If earth never had any life, it would simply be a warmer soup. Instead look around at what photosynthesis and energy storage has accomplished. Without it there would not be hundred story buildings, roads, olympic competitions, taxes, karaoke, or anything thay exists around us. Certainly without life all energy from the sun would have simply blasted a the wet space rock that we call earth all the same. I posit that life is a way to slow the trend towards entropy. It is ultimately unstoppable, but the protest of life is beautiful in its epemeral spite in the face of that truth.
- XorNot 3y agoComplex organic molecules don't dig themselves out of the ground and set themselves on fire.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> It takes energy and produces order from it, inefficiantly but order still. If earth never had any life, it would simply be a warmer soup. The point is, that warmer soup would be a net lower entropy state if you take the entire Earth and/or the Solar System into the consideration. Life takes energy and produces order, which means it excretes even more disorder somewhere else.