The second law of thermodynamics isn’t magic; it’s simply the fact that when you have categories with many possible states that fit in them, and categories with only a few states that count, jumping randomly from state to state will tend to put you in the larger categories. Hence melting-arrange atoms randomly and it’s more likely that you’ll end up in a jumble than in one of the few arrangements that permit solidity. Hence heat equalizing-the kinetic energy of thermal motion can spread out in many ways, but remain concentrated in only a few; thus it tends to spread out. You can call that the universe hating order if you like, but it’s a well-understood process that operates purely through small targets being harder to hit; not through a force actively pushing us towards chaos, making particles zig when they otherwise would have zagged so as to create more disorder.
This being the case, claiming that life exists for the purpose of wasting energy seems absurd. Evolution appears to explain the existence of life, and it is not an entropic process. Positing anything else being behind it requires evidence, something about life that evolution doesn’t explain and entropy-driven life would. Also, remember, entropy doesn’t think ahead. It is purely the difficulty of hitting small targets; a bullet isn’t going to ‘decide’ to swerve into a bull’s eye as part of a plan to miss more later! It would be very strange if this could somehow mold us into fearing both death and immortality as part of a plan to gather as much energy as we could, then waste it through our deaths.
This seems like academics seeking to be edgy much more than a coherent explanation of biology.
As for transhumanism being overly interested in good or evil, what would you suggest we do instead? It’s rather self-defeating to suggest that losing interest in goodness would be a good idea.
This seems wrong.
The second law of thermodynamics isn’t magic; it’s simply the fact that when you have categories with many possible states that fit in them, and categories with only a few states that count, jumping randomly from state to state will tend to put you in the larger categories. Hence melting-arrange atoms randomly and it’s more likely that you’ll end up in a jumble than in one of the few arrangements that permit solidity. Hence heat equalizing-the kinetic energy of thermal motion can spread out in many ways, but remain concentrated in only a few; thus it tends to spread out. You can call that the universe hating order if you like, but it’s a well-understood process that operates purely through small targets being harder to hit; not through a force actively pushing us towards chaos, making particles zig when they otherwise would have zagged so as to create more disorder.
This being the case, claiming that life exists for the purpose of wasting energy seems absurd. Evolution appears to explain the existence of life, and it is not an entropic process. Positing anything else being behind it requires evidence, something about life that evolution doesn’t explain and entropy-driven life would. Also, remember, entropy doesn’t think ahead. It is purely the difficulty of hitting small targets; a bullet isn’t going to ‘decide’ to swerve into a bull’s eye as part of a plan to miss more later! It would be very strange if this could somehow mold us into fearing both death and immortality as part of a plan to gather as much energy as we could, then waste it through our deaths.
This seems like academics seeking to be edgy much more than a coherent explanation of biology.
As for transhumanism being overly interested in good or evil, what would you suggest we do instead? It’s rather self-defeating to suggest that losing interest in goodness would be a good idea.