Re: 2nd law clarifications

On 2/01/2025 5:53 pm, MarkE wrote:

Are these statements correct? Could they be better expressed?
  Local entropy can decrease in an open system with an input of free energy.
 Free energy alone is not sufficient to maintain or further decrease low local entropy: an energy capture and transformation mechanism is also needed.
 Extant life *maintains* low local entropy through its organisation and processes.
 Evolving life *decreases* low local entropy through the ratcheting mechanism natural selection acting on random mutations in instances where that evolution increases functional complexity and organisation.
 There is no other known mechanism apart from natural selection that does this. For example, neutral drift alone increases entropy.
 

And for anyone interested, a response to the same prompt from version 4o1 which "Uses advanced reasoning", compared with the response from version 4o which is "Great for most tasks". Pretty similar at a glance?
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Thought for 5 seconds
Below is a brief commentary and critique of each statement, with an emphasis on clarifying terminology (especially entropy) and the nuances of biological and thermodynamic processes.
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1. “Local entropy can decrease in an open system with an input of free energy.”
Commentary:
• This is a standard thermodynamic principle: while overall entropy in the universe increases, an open system can experience a local decrease in entropy if it receives sufficient free energy from the environment. Examples include crystallization processes, growing organisms, and the organization within cells, all of which export heat or byproducts that increase the entropy of their surroundings.
Critique:
• The statement is accurate but can be misread if one is not familiar with the distinction between local and global entropy. Emphasizing that “the total entropy (system + surroundings) still goes up” can prevent misunderstandings.
• “Local entropy” can refer to thermodynamic entropy, informational entropy, or the more general concept of “order.” Being explicit about which is intended (usually thermodynamic) helps clarity.
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2. “Free energy alone is not sufficient to maintain or further decrease low local entropy: an energy capture and transformation mechanism is also needed.”
Commentary:
• Merely having access to free energy (e.g., sunlight, geothermal heat) does not guarantee that a system will organize itself or maintain lower entropy. You need a process—such as photosynthesis or chemiosmosis—that harnesses and transforms that energy into work.
• In living systems, enzymes, membranes, and metabolic pathways are crucial for channeling energy into productive, entropy-lowering processes.
Critique:
• This is a well-stated point because it highlights the importance of structure and function in living (or pre-living) systems. For example, an RNA-based protocell requires not just nucleotides and energy sources but also a catalytic or templating mechanism to assemble and replicate its molecules.
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3. “Extant life maintains low local entropy through its organisation and processes.”
Commentary:
• Living organisms are prime examples of open systems. They maintain internal order (low entropy) by constantly taking in free energy (food, sunlight, etc.) and expelling waste heat and byproducts.
• Metabolic pathways, cellular repair, and reproduction all rely on organizational frameworks that keep internal processes efficient and structured.
Critique:
• The statement is accurate as a broad description of how life combats entropy. However, a reader should remember that the net process (organism + environment) still increases entropy overall.
• Additionally, “low local entropy” might be reworded to “high degree of order,” since “low entropy” and “high order” are sometimes more intuitive phrasing in discussions about life’s internal maintenance.
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4. “Evolving life decreases low local entropy through the ratcheting mechanism natural selection acting on random mutations in instances where that evolution increases functional complexity and organisation.”
Commentary:
• Evolutionary theory does suggest that in many lineages, complexity and functional organization can increase over time. Natural selection, in a “ratchet-like” manner, preserves advantageous variations and discards harmful ones, cumulatively leading to higher organizational states in certain contexts (e.g., the evolution of multicellularity, complex organ systems, etc.).
• This ties an informational notion of entropy (where more complex, well-ordered genetic or phenotypic structures might be considered “lower entropy”) to evolutionary mechanisms.
Critique:
• Saying “decreases low local entropy” can be confusing, because in strict thermodynamic terms, even highly complex organisms still produce substantial entropy in their surroundings. The statement seems to lean more on informational or organizational entropy (sometimes discussed in evolutionary biology).
• Evolution does not always lead to increased complexity. Some lineages undergo simplification (e.g., parasites lose functions). Thus, the directionality toward greater complexity is not universal, but where it happens, selection can indeed ratchet complexity upward.
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5. “There is no other known mechanism apart from natural selection that does this. For example, neutral drift alone increases entropy.”
Commentary:
• Natural selection is indeed the main evolutionary mechanism that systematically drives adaptive increases in complexity or organized function. Neutral drift, by contrast, is random with respect to fitness and can lead to loss of function or accumulation of “junk” over time, which some might call an increase in entropy or disorder.
• From a purely adaptive standpoint, selection is the only consistent force that pushes complexity upward (when complexity correlates with higher fitness).
Critique:
• The statement might be too strong if taken literally. Gene duplication, horizontal gene transfer, and other genetic processes can contribute to increased complexity, but they typically rely on selection to retain those beneficial changes over time. Hence, these additional mechanisms plus selection shape complexity.
• Neutral drift does not always just increase entropy—sometimes neutral or nearly neutral changes become exapted for new functions, later co-opted by selection. So, while drift by itself does not drive functional complexity, in combination with selection it can still produce complexity.
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Final Thoughts
Overall, the statements highlight key ideas about how living systems can locally decrease entropy (in the sense of increasing organization) and how evolution—powered by natural selection—can lead to increased functional complexity. The main points to clarify or refine involve:
1. Distinguishing local from global entropy (to avoid thermodynamic misunderstandings).
2. Differentiating between thermodynamic entropy and informational/organizational concepts of entropy (commonly used in evolutionary and systems biology).
3. Emphasizing that natural selection works best when combined with other genetic mechanisms (drift, mutation, recombination, etc.) to create new variations, even though selection is the primary driver for preserving complex, lower-entropy (i.e., more organized) states in living systems.
These statements, with minor refinements, provide a good conceptual framework for understanding how open systems (like organisms) maintain and even extend internal order over time, despite the universal increase of entropy in closed systems.