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Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex

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1–10 of 109 posts

Re: Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex

#5

I remember reading somewhere that maybe the purpose of life is to increase entropy in the universe. If that is true and we haven't found any sound evidence of life elsewhere, I don't know.

It tracks, though "attaining a higher state of entropy" is just what Universes generally do it seems, given our n of 1 Universes we've started to evaluate.

Though, I'm not sure if life is the best at it, when compared to say a black hole. Some smart apes burning off fossil fuels seems pretty insignificant in comparison -- or even seeing what our own Sun does in a few seconds.

File that under, "The Earth will be fine in the long run, it's humans that are f'd" George Carlin pov. Maybe when we start building Death Stars (plural)

Re: Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex

#6

I remember reading somewhere that maybe the purpose of life is to increase entropy in the universe. If that is true and we haven't found any sound evidence of life elsewhere, I don't know.

Where did you read this? "Purpose" is a very loaded word. If life has any purpose at all, it's to reproduce and propagate one's genes. Additional entropy just sounds like an inevitable side-effect of that.

Re: Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex

#7
I'm fairly sure this is already in the usual canon of statistical mechanics.

"When one compares a hotplate with and without a Benard cell apparatus on top, there is an overall increase in entropy as energy passes through the system as required by the second law, because the increase in entropy in the environment (at the heat sink) is greater than the decreases in entropy that come about by maintaining gradients within the Benard cell system."

Re: Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex

#9

I remember reading somewhere that maybe the purpose of life is to increase entropy in the universe. If that is true and we haven't found any sound evidence of life elsewhere, I don't know.

I have lost the book, but I think I read this in "What is Life? And Other Scientific Essays" by Erwin Schrödinger. If I recall, it was one of the "Other Scientific Essays."

Re: Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex

#10
post #6

I remember reading somewhere that maybe the purpose of life is to increase entropy in the universe. If that is true and we haven't found any sound evidence of life elsewhere, I don't know.

Where did you read this? "Purpose" is a very loaded word. If life has any purpose at all, it's to reproduce and propagate one's genes. Additional entropy just sounds like an inevitable side-effect of that.

Agreed about purpose being a loaded term.

It's my, somewhat lazy, philosophical opinion, that there isn't any purpose and there doesn't need to be one.

I don't see why the universe would need a purpose for anything. Things are what they. Things changing state. Entropy.

I see reproduction as more of built in motivation to our system than a purpose as such. But that's semantics, and my purpose in life is not to argue about words! ;-)

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