[zmgsabst]

> There was only one possible way to be, and everything was that way. Zero entropy.

The issue I’m having is this:

There are a lot of states that initial singularity could have been in, leading to a whole diversity of universes.

How is it different than your smoke example?

[snowwrestler]

There are a lot of possible singularities that could have existed, but only one did. (Again: if it did.)

At least, in the context of this universe. But that is the entire and only context available to us.

Whereas all sorts of different clouds of smoke exist, some probably even right this second just here on Earth.

[zmgsabst]

> At least, in the context of this universe. But that is the entire and only context available to us.

But we know things take “multiple paths” — why does that not apply to the original singularity diverging into multiple universes?

> Whereas all sorts of different clouds of smoke exist, some probably even right this second just here on Earth.

But only a particular cloud exists — the one that comes out of your fire. You go from one log as it exists to one cloud as it exists… one state to one state.

We normally explain that as “there’s more potential ways to be a cloud than potential ways to be a log”, but that brings us back to my question…

Why do the potential other smoke clouds count as entropy in the case of smoke clouds but not potential other universes in the case of universes?