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To anyone curious about the intimated interplay of entropy and life, I want to highly recommend the book: The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes It

To anyone curious about the intimated interplay of entropy and life, I want to highly recommend the book: The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity by Bobby Azarian > When you empty a bathtub, why does a swirl form? → Because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy. > The author argues in that life is very likely because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the universe. I fear my words don't do the book justice, I found it very long, but just as illuminating, highly recommended.

passion__desire 3y ago
Life: Inevitable or fluke? by Nick Lane https://nick-lane.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Lane-New-Sci-Life.pdf https://nick-lane.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Lane-New-Sc...
blaze33 3y ago
Related thread a week ago: 'Entropy: A little understood concept in physics [video]' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560104 I read "Hour of Our Delight: Cosmic Evolution, Order, and Complexity" by Hubert Reeves as a teenager which I can also recommend. That's how I learned about the low entropy sunlight converted to higher entropy IR radiation on earth, allowing complex life to exist without breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics. So I was happy to see it talked about. Now, life seen as an entropy-increasing system was a really interesting take on the topic! Until now my understanding was that it's the universe expansion that actually sorta decreased the local "entropy density" and allowed to radiate low entropy IR in the ever colder empty space in the first place.
MeteorMarc 3y ago
Did not read your suggestion yet, but the same concept is explained in "Every life is on fire" by Jeremy England.
amelius 3y ago
So the swirl in the bathtub is alive according to this theory?
- ethanbond 3y ago
  I don’t think that’s what they’re saying. They’re saying both a bathtub’s whirlpool and an organism’s energy consumption are examples of methods to increase entropy and both of them may emerge specifically because of the universe’s general tendency toward higher entropy.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  How generic is computation? Computers made of water, wind and wood... may be bubbling, sighing or quietly growing without our suspicion that such activities are tantamount to a turmoil of computation whose best description is itself. -- A. K. Dewdney, Computer Recreations [0] [0] https://youtu.be/lWDTv4c_ITo?t=3731 https://youtu.be/lWDTv4c_ITo?t=3731
sebastialonso 3y ago
I'll thank this recommendation by recommending The Gramatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life by Jeremy Campbell. More or less same topics.
amelius 3y ago
> The author argues in that life is very likely because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the universe. Shouldn't that be: to /decrease/ entropy locally?
- rewgs 3y ago
  A decrease locally, yes, but an increase overall. A life form is definitely something I'd consider to be highly organized, i.e. low entropy, but that order is maintained via a greater relative increase of entropy by destroying and consuming other "instances" of low entropy (plants, animals, etc) for nutrition, which are they themselves sustained by disproportionate increases of entropy (consuming of other organisms, the sun doing its thing, etc). So, as a life form tends to fight for its own survival -- survival being "just" a process of increasing entropy every else but the life form itself -- it is indeed an extremely efficient way of increasing entropy in the universe, in that is requires only a single point of decrease in order to cause a theoretically infinite instances of increase. I suddenly feel an awful lot like a cow on my way to the slaughter indeed, and have the urge to go play Dark Souls.
goodbyesf 3y ago
> The author argues in that life is very likely because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the universe. In the universe? You could argue life is the most efficient way to increase entropy within a local system ( like ants on a forest floor dissembling an insect carcass ), but I find it hard to believe life is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the entire universe. The assumed expansion of the universe itself increases entropy in a manner no life could ever hope to achieve.
- emanuer 3y ago
  What an excellent point. If it is addressed in the book, I don't remember. If we actually accept that expansion increase in entropy, I do not know what could possibly compete with this.
exclipy 3y ago
> The author argues in that life is very likely because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the universe Why does the universe favour things that efficiently increase entropy?

passion__desire 3y ago

Life: Inevitable or fluke? by Nick Lane https://nick-lane.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Lane-New-Sci-Life.pdf https://nick-lane.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Lane-New-Sc...

blaze33 3y ago

Related thread a week ago: 'Entropy: A little understood concept in physics [video]' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560104 I read "Hour of Our Delight: Cosmic Evolution, Order, and Complexity" by Hubert Reeves as a teenager which I can also recommend. That's how I learned about the low entropy sunlight converted to higher entropy IR radiation on earth, allowing complex life to exist without breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics. So I was happy to see it talked about. Now, life seen as an entropy-increasing system was a really interesting take on the topic! Until now my understanding was that it's the universe expansion that actually sorta decreased the local "entropy density" and allowed to radiate low entropy IR in the ever colder empty space in the first place.

MeteorMarc 3y ago

Did not read your suggestion yet, but the same concept is explained in "Every life is on fire" by Jeremy England.

amelius 3y ago

So the swirl in the bathtub is alive according to this theory?

ethanbond 3y ago
I don’t think that’s what they’re saying. They’re saying both a bathtub’s whirlpool and an organism’s energy consumption are examples of methods to increase entropy and both of them may emerge specifically because of the universe’s general tendency toward higher entropy.
passion__desire 3y ago
How generic is computation? Computers made of water, wind and wood... may be bubbling, sighing or quietly growing without our suspicion that such activities are tantamount to a turmoil of computation whose best description is itself. -- A. K. Dewdney, Computer Recreations [0] [0] https://youtu.be/lWDTv4c_ITo?t=3731 https://youtu.be/lWDTv4c_ITo?t=3731

sebastialonso 3y ago

I'll thank this recommendation by recommending The Gramatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life by Jeremy Campbell. More or less same topics.

amelius 3y ago

> The author argues in that life is very likely because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the universe. Shouldn't that be: to /decrease/ entropy locally?

rewgs 3y ago
A decrease locally, yes, but an increase overall. A life form is definitely something I'd consider to be highly organized, i.e. low entropy, but that order is maintained via a greater relative increase of entropy by destroying and consuming other "instances" of low entropy (plants, animals, etc) for nutrition, which are they themselves sustained by disproportionate increases of entropy (consuming of other organisms, the sun doing its thing, etc). So, as a life form tends to fight for its own survival -- survival being "just" a process of increasing entropy every else but the life form itself -- it is indeed an extremely efficient way of increasing entropy in the universe, in that is requires only a single point of decrease in order to cause a theoretically infinite instances of increase. I suddenly feel an awful lot like a cow on my way to the slaughter indeed, and have the urge to go play Dark Souls.

goodbyesf 3y ago

> The author argues in that life is very likely because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the universe. In the universe? You could argue life is the most efficient way to increase entropy within a local system ( like ants on a forest floor dissembling an insect carcass ), but I find it hard to believe life is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the entire universe. The assumed expansion of the universe itself increases entropy in a manner no life could ever hope to achieve.

emanuer 3y ago
What an excellent point. If it is addressed in the book, I don't remember. If we actually accept that expansion increase in entropy, I do not know what could possibly compete with this.

exclipy 3y ago

> The author argues in that life is very likely because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the universe Why does the universe favour things that efficiently increase entropy?