Re: 2nd law clarifications

On 1/2/2025 12:53 AM, 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.
 

All of this doesn't matter.  The second law of thermodynamics does not prohibit the origin of life, nor does it prohibit the evolution of life over billions of years that it has been evolving on this planet.  Being wrong about your concepts like "neutral drift" doesn't matter because you can't get to where you want to go with this argument.  Just think, drift obviously does not have to be neutral to selection.  Drift can obviously decrease your concept of entropy.
Entropy is always increasing whether there is an energy capture method or not.  As the entropy increases it just produces something like molecules that can exist for a while before contributing to the continued entropy increase.  Entropy is increasing a lot as photons are captured by plants and in their efforts to make glucose.