Fist and Faith wrote:Zarathustra wrote:There are several concepts being mixed about here. There is not just a question of order vs disorder, but also complexity. The concepts are defined mathematically, and I'm not a mathematician. But something that can be written as a simple formula, say a number consisting of a string of 2s repeating indefinitely, we could describe this very simply with a few symbols. It has order, but very low complexity. It's not random, but it's not complex.
All the really interesting things about life come from building up complexity, not merely triumphing over disorder.
Interesting thinking, to be sure. But still, entropy will break down the complex life just as surely as the string of 2s, right?
The string of 2s is analogous to full homogeneity, which you said would be the most ordered state. The heat death of the universe won't be like this, it will be random. However, everything will be "smeared out" so that there will not be any significant energy differences around the universe. It's these differences that create the potential for everything we deem good.
The point of maximum entropy is when you can't do anymore useful work. There will still be random energy, but you can't harness it for anything, because energy is only useful when there is an energy difference between two states, e.g. two poles on a battery where the electrons are flowing from one to the other, or a watermill where water is flowing from high potential energy (due to its height + gravity) to low potential energy. If we use the analogy of a watermill for the universe, maximum entropy is when all the water will have run downhill and there will no longer be any process that lifts it back up, which would take another energy difference. Differences imply structure. Homogeneity is the absence of difference, and hence the absence of structure. That's why we call it maximum disorder, even when it's homogenous.
I think Pete talked about the fact that there would still be potential energy, even if there are only atoms left, because each atom contains a lot of energy. But perhaps he's not aware that eventually all the atoms will break down, too.
Joe Biden β¦ putting the Dem in dementia since (at least) 2020.