Yes, you are exactly right, that is my awkward wording for exactly the point you're trying to make. I should have added, "besides life" to the end of my senten

Yes, you are exactly right, that is my awkward wording for exactly the point you're trying to make. I should have added, "besides life" to the end of my sentence. The fact that there is not a more thermodynamically favorable pathway besides life is probably what allowed life to emerge in the first place. If there was a more efficient way to dissipate that energy, earth would probably be dead. Or put another way: life emerged because it was the most thermodynamically favorable way to dissipate the available free energy in our system.