this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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After reading what I have posted, it's totally fair to believe that I do not find beauty or inspiration in nature. However, I can give you some reassurance.
How? Well, I actually I find the battle against entropy amazing and inspiring. A while ago I was sipping tea while my dog nestled next to me, and I was moved thinking about how we make each other so happy. I am also moved by people, people who look beyond their belly button, people who are kind, people who are good at what they do.
It's not just that we're doomed to accept brutality and appreciate tiny slivers of beauty. There's actually steps that we can take to support life. For example, we can become a part of an assemblage that we like. Sometimes that assemblage is a group of friends, a political group, or an organization. You know you're in the right place when your incentives align with that of the group. There's an alignment around shared values, shared goals. Your atoms are keeping your structural integrity. Your cells are keeping you alive. Your thoughts are aiding you in problem solving and connecting with others. And your friends are connecting with you.
There's quite a bit more to this, so if you're interested in this way of understanding the world, you can check out Prosocial by evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson and psychologists Paul W. B. Atkins and Steven C. Hayes.
I have to ask what you mean by fight against entropy? Are you referring to the apparent paradox that complex life goes against the idea of entropy tending to increase?
It is, however, only apparent. Assembleages, as you call them, are just possible expressions of energy in the system. Like if you put energy into a double pendulum in can swing in complex patterns. When you make any local reduction to entropy, by assembling order, it necessarily comes at the cost of increased 'global' entropy. That's the meaning of the second law. Nobody can fight against it, without reversing the direction of time.
I'd say the fight against entropy is an attempt to retain specific expressions of energy in the system. The expressions of energy are assemblages that have created order. And yes, as you said, the creation of order has a cost: greater global entropy.
In case you're interested, this way of looking at entropy and life comes from Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker.