
Entropy and Life - aluket
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life
======
jotakami
I’m currently working on a PhD in cryptography and I ran into this particular
entry a few months ago while trying to wrap my head around entropy as an
information theoretic concept. To be honest, it triggered a cascade of
revelation that I had not felt since the last time I took psychedelics.

I read another article recently about the unexpectedly large role that
randomness plays in embryonic development, and an idea clicked into place:

Life is about sustaining order amongst chaos, negentropy in a sea of entropy.
But how does evolution lead to larger and larger pockets of negentropy that
are capable of sustaining in increasingly hostile environments? How exactly
does evolution lead to more and more “advanced” life forms?

Enter the magic of randomized algorithms. Randomized algorithms can often
solve hard computational problems very efficiently, with the tradeoff that
they have a small chance of failure. We can envision evolutionary leaps as
computational problems, such as finding just the right folded protein to
catalyze a particular cellular reaction. The magic of evolution is not just in
building stable order, but also in harnessing randomness/entropy to solve
environmental problems and then bootstrapping those solutions to solve higher
level problems. Think about how just enough randomness is allowed into the
process of meiosis to create perfectly functioning new humans that are
wonderfully unique.

DNA and RNA are the non-volatile memory of the biological computer. Central
nervous systems eventually reached a level of complexity that allowed them to
persist memories, which opened up an even higher order problem solving
mechanism. We humans have taken it even further with a cerebral cortex capable
of abstraction, leading to complex language and the technology to record that
language permanently.

~~~
burnte
My favorite take on life an entropy is that life is the most efficient way to
burn energy, to increase entropy. Life is inevitable in the universe simply as
a method of increasing overall entropy efficiently. A bunch of chemicals may
eventually decompose into photons and electrons, but it's a lot faster if
something eats them.

~~~
willis936
Entropy increase is a stochastic process though. The rules of nature do not
result in a system that maximizes entropy at the maximum possible rate.

~~~
burnte
Entropy increase need not be chaotic. Stars generate entropy at a very
reliable rate. We also do not know what a maximum rate, and I didn't state
life was anything like a maximum rate, just faster than non-life in some
circumstances.

~~~
willis936
But we don't know, or even think, that the rules of nature prefer a rate of
entropy increase. We just know that it does increase, on average, in closed
systems. If life as we know it creates entropy at a high rate compared to
other natural processes, that is not a reason for life to be compulsory, or
even preferred, by nature.

------
KhoomeiK
My second LSD trip was all about this idea. The entirety of the universe heads
in the direction of disorganization and life is the only process that does the
opposite. Life is a tool by which the universe organizes itself. There's
parallels of this idea everywhere (Father Sky, Mother Earth).

At least that's what I thought until I did a lot more reading over the next
couple days after my trip and discarded the idea. Entropy and how life
interacts with it turned out to be significantly more complicated than I
thought.

~~~
platz
If you have a glass of separated half coffee on the bottom and cream on the
top, the complexity temporarily increases as the two halfs mix.

Then the complexity goes down again, as it becomes uniformly mixed.

Yet, the coffee and cream are not alive.

~~~
sooheon
What are the chances of coffee and cream molecules being arranged in just that
configuration without the intervention of life forms with caffeine addictions
and ceramics factories?

~~~
platz
what are the chances of an initial state of the universe with extremely low
entropy?

the low entropy starting initial condition is the same in both cases, the
glass is meant to be an analogy of the big bang.

~~~
sooheon
> Then the complexity goes down again, as it becomes uniformly mixed.

This part is incorrect. It requires the intervention of energy by motivated
life forms to to un-mix a mixture of coffee and cream, therefore it is very
high entropy.

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BjoernKW
In the appendix of the first Dune novel Frank Herbert has Liet Kynes say
something along the lines of life being its own device for ever more
efficiently making use of the energy available in a system, which in my
opinion describes the relation between entropy and life quite nicely.

~~~
dntbnmpls
Also, the no-ship, no-chamber, "no-gene" vs prescience describes the battle
between data and privacy. The desire to know and the desire to remain hidden.

------
QuadrupleA
Interesting paradox, how life seems to get more organized and contradict the
2nd law of thermodynamics. But of course like the article mentions, the 2nd
law deals with closed systems and life on earth is an open system with a
constant input of stupendous amounts of energy from the nuclear fusion furnace
we orbit. A human in a closed system (airtight box?) would entrop-ize pretty
quickly.

~~~
ThemalSpan
Ilya Prigogine won a Nobel prize working on that very issue!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipative_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipative_system)

~~~
coderthrow
[https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/prigogine-
lecture...](https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/prigogine-lecture.pdf)

------
garganzol
Entropy fuels all chemical reactions. Atoms wouldn't be able to recombine into
molecules without the entropy. The Wiki article tries to build some higher
abstractions but it is simple as that.

No entropy (absolute zero temperature) leads to the absence of Brownian motion
which consequently leads to inability of atoms to recombine and form new
matter. All chemical reactions would totally stop at 0 degrees.

Life would not be possible without chemical reactions. Entropy is invisible
fuel that powers everything and makes things tick.

------
zadler
I have a theory about this. To me the relationship between entropy and life
was a big realisation and left me wondering why it wasn’t of greater cultural
or scientific interest. Here’s what I came up with:

All life is preoccupied with removing free energy in order to get greater
predictability over the future, and that encompasses literally everything we
do in one way or another. Therefore, the theory that life reduces local
entropy is not in any way useful, because it doesn’t guide us to do anything
differently than we are already doing. It’s a bit similar to the anthropic
principle.

Example: let’s say you need to clean up your room. You’ll find that even doing
a very quick straightening of debris on a table will make a space feel more
orderly and produce some level of satisfaction. But if you’re not the type to
do that regularly, you might not bother the next time because clutter is the
norm and it’s more dependable.

Another example: tell a businessman that life is a process which reduces
entropy locally. Ok, so he has to get greater predictability over his
circumstances, how to do that? More money and power. That was already taking
place.

Thus, this theory hasn’t really taken off for lack of utility.

When we have a magical entropy measuring device, then yes, we can use it for
all sorts of things...

~~~
jotakami
I had similar thought, which led me to believe that the closest thing to God
is the irreducible quantum randomness in our molecules.

In fact, I believe that life is not exclusively about order, but rather about
harnessing randomness (entropy by another name) and capturing its output to
bootstrap solutions to environmental problems. Our entire manner of
reproduction is about allowing just enough randomness to produce interesting
new results while maintaining the integrity of the life-form.

I’m a cryptographer, by the way, so what got me thinking about this was how we
put a nice box around randomness to produce cool stuff like encryption and
signature schemes.

~~~
0134340
That sounds similar to what I arrived to when I became somewhat obsessed with
the topic yet admittedly lacking much knowledge about it. Lookup hormesis
(basically life needing some amount of chaos to keep it strong) or 10th man
rule, there's some interesting correlates that I wrote about here [0]. It's
all pretty interesting but being stubborn as I am, it took me a while to
realize I'm better off leaving it to smarter people more versed in those
topics. I eagerly await some very intelligent person who doesn't mind risking
being seen as a quack to try to marry thermodynamic principles with human
behavior and the like, even though it's more descriptive than prescriptive and
may not tell us as much as we'd like to know. It also may be kind of
existentially defeating to some as it'd necessarily prescribe deterministic
views to life but some say quantum mechanics still leaves some philosophical
wiggle-room for us there.

0: [https://0134340.blogspot.com/2019/02/playing-tenth-
man.html](https://0134340.blogspot.com/2019/02/playing-tenth-man.html)

------
sci_prog
Just read Carlo Ravelli's book The order of time, highly recommend. It argues
that the change in entropy is the only equation of fundamental physics that
knows any difference between past and future. It's the equation for time's
arrow.

~~~
madhadron
There are a few other asymmetries, such as the time asymmetry implied by CP
violation in things like kaon decay.

------
julienchastang
I recently discovered the work of Jeremy England [1] on this topic on a PBS
Space Time YouTube video [2] dedicated to the origins of life. England's work
dates back a few years (2012) and seems like it was an exciting advancement in
the field but was also controversial. Does anyone here know the status of this
line of research?

[1]
[https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4818538](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4818538)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcfLZSL7YGw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcfLZSL7YGw)

~~~
lioeters
I read an article about Jeremy England a few years ago, and have often thought
back on it.

A New Physics Theory of Life - [https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-
thermodynamics-theory-o...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-
thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/)

Here's his website with a list of recent publications:
[https://www.englandlab.com/publications.html](https://www.englandlab.com/publications.html)

\---

This one stands out for me:

Design of conditions for emergence of self-replicators -
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.09191.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.09191.pdf)
(2018, pdf)

------
jbotz
Life may not be the _only_ process that works counter-entropy. There are two
lines of thinking emerging that the principles we see so clearly in life may
be more general and appear in abiotic processes as well... that physical
systems "evolve" to transform available energy gradients into a localized
increase in complexity. So evolution in a general sense is more fundamental
than life, and inevitably eventually leads toward processes complex enough to
be called "life".

One comes from the work of Jeremy England[1], who has published some excellent
papers showing what he calls 'dissipation-driven adaptation', natural
selection working on phsyical and pre-biological systems. Englands work is
really eye-opening and I have feeling if he keeps it up he may be a likely
candidate for a Nobel in physics _or_ biology some day.

The other line comes from Adrian Bejan's formulation of what he calls the
"constructal law"[2]. This describes some specific patterns according to which
physical systems evolve to dissipate energy more efficiently. It seems to me
that Bejan is a bit under-appreciated in academia, although apparently people
have found quite a few practical applications of his ideas.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_England)

[2] [https://constructallaw.com/](https://constructallaw.com/)

~~~
Geee
Thanks. I've been wondering what's the correct word for 'evolution' in
general. It's usually used to refer to evolution of life. However, similar
process happens everywhere.

I think this mechanism actually explains why there is anything at all. Are
there any theories about the evolution of physics itself? Or how could a
universe be evolved out of randomness? Or if there's a 'base reality' which
can support 'simulated reality' be evolved in it? I think something really
simple could evolve into supporting simulated child-universes with more
complex rules.

------
gooseus
Into the Cool by Dorion Sagan and Eric Schneider is an excellent book on this
subject, imo.

------
paraschopra
I made a short film on a related topic. Check it out [https://youtu.be/Bv42PQ-
Xxj8](https://youtu.be/Bv42PQ-Xxj8)

~~~
0134340
I don't disagree with the proclamation here but can't say I agree with the
result. The economy is tied to productivity and without productivity we're
doomed to be stuck on an earth that will eventually stop existing, no matter
how long we try to keep it habitable. I don't know what the best answer is but
I don't think it should be to decrease productivity, at least not in the STEM
sector.

------
willis936
This reminds me of some of the more interesting thoughts I had while learning
about information theory and astrophysics. Apologies for the lack of rigorous
terminology, this is all stuff I’ve just thought about and never discussed.

The speed of light is also the speed of causality. Information can be sent out
at that speed. So information sources have a sphere of expanding influence.
Information that one node sends can be taken in by another node, modified,
then retransmitted. This is general enough that it could apply to many
contexts, but I am interested in the most general context. Information that
replicates itself: memes. Is our existence creating a meme sphere? Will our
meme sphere(s) collide with other meme spheres? Is this all just an
unnecessarily strange way to look at things? I wish I had a firmer grasp on
interpretations of quantum mechanics, since that may inform some of my
questions.

~~~
sooheon
The more complex the encoding of information, the more time it takes to decode
and retransmit it. Speed of light may be an upper bound on the speed of
information, but anything on the order of memes require complex life forms to
communicate and understand them.

> Will our meme sphere(s) collide with other meme spheres

Of course, "meme spheres" already collide all the time, but I think they are
subject to too many intervening forces to be idealized as actual physical
spheres like the propagation of light in a vacuum might be.

~~~
willis936
The meme spheres interact in a more complicated process than just a repeater.
They can amplify each other by sending and returning the same (or similar)
information.

Some ideas get retransmitted a lot more than others. I wonder if a universally
retransmitted (maximum strength) meme is possible.

------
hertzdog
Entropy, energy and life was the topic of a very interesting book I read in
the last two days: “why information grows” by Cesar Hidalgo. If you are
interested on this topic it’s a must read!

------
Barrin92
Okay really weird to see this come up because just a few days ago I saw a
video about reductionism in science and free will, I think it was a John
Searle lecture.

I find the idea of life as an organizing force that locally reduces entropy
and 'offloads' disorder on the environment deeply compelling, and what I
wondered was, does this not put a pretty big nail into reductionist scientific
worldviews that argue purely in terms of bottom-up physical explanations?

Is there some account of life at the level of particles that could ever give a
reasonable description of the behavior we observe, or is the existence of
living organisms evidence of some sort of genuine top-down causality?

The reason why I was looking into this was the TV show Devs that toys with the
idea of determinism and the idea that even though someone could look at a
prediction of their future, they could not change it, and to me this made
sense if the world could be purely explained in terms of bottom-up physics,
but I started to scratch my head if decision making could actually go top-
down.

Anyway slightly rambly post but if someone has a book, or essay or some other
reading recommendation on this I'd appreciate it.

~~~
jdjrirkfkfk
Not sure if you are aware of "dissipative energy systems", a possible top down
principle:

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-
theory-o...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-
the-origin-of-life-20140122/)

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-
physics-t...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-
theory-of-life-20170726/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5686405/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5686405/)

------
c-smile
Universe was born pregnant with life, (C) mine, circa 2010.

I mean that with that huge size and so number of opportunities, "invention" of
self-reproducible forms is inevitable. And so we can treat the life as yet
another form of matter.

There are quite a lot of possible consequences of this axiom.

------
ericye16
For a good piece of fiction that explores this idea, read the short story
Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

------
dharma1
The recent interview with David Silver on Lex Fridman's podcast touches on
this towards the end -
[https://youtu.be/uPUEq8d73JI?t=6081](https://youtu.be/uPUEq8d73JI?t=6081)

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theophrastus
A chemical catalyst is an agent which lowers the activation energy for a
reaction to proceed. A biochemistry professor of mine was fond of declaring
life to be an _entropic catalyst._

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engineeringp
Thanks for sharing, its useful :)

