[quirk]

I'm reading Nick Lane's book The Vital Question right now and he discusses this in some ways. Life escapes entropy at the local level, but increases entropy in its environment. At least this is what I think he is saying, I'm about 1/3 of the way through and it's pretty dense for a popular science book.

[Jerrrry]

>Life escapes entropy at the local level, but increases entropy in its environment.

Yep, it _allows_ for increasing localized complexity due to a temperature gradient - without a temperature gradient, no (useful) work can be done. Complexity can then exhibit emergent behaviors/properties that further reduce the flow of entropy (locally).

This tight feedback loop can (but not necessarily must) result in higher and higher orders of complexity, which eventually produce specialized systems that resemble proto-life. Once a reproducible mechanism exists (either directly reproducible or through a few sub-steps), one notable emergent property is self-selection due to limited resources, which adds to the exponential acceleration of excellence.

But it's all local, as the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to the whole system - Earth isn't a closed system, it is a gradient, as we bask in the sunlight.

Gravity is simultaneously the reason entropy increases globally, and the reason it can decrease locally; pulling us (for 'free') diagonally into the fourth dimension of space-time.

[TeMPOraL]

> But it's all local, as the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to the whole system - Earth isn't a closed system, it is a gradient, as we bask in the sunlight.

Sunlight is one thing, but I feel the key point is, Earth with life on it increases entropy faster than the one without, even with the same sunlight flux.

The way I've been imagining for some years now is a bit "bottom-up": life is electrochemical nanotech; every tick of any piece has to increase entropy or keep it the same - but as those pieces assemble to form increasingly complex life forms, at every level of complexity you can find loops that do the simple job of "let's take this excess entropy and move it over there". Out of the protein bundle. Out of the cell. Out of the body. Into water, or air.

> Gravity is simultaneously the reason entropy increases globally, and the reason it can decrease locally; pulling us (for 'free') diagonally into the fourth dimension of space-time.

For that I'll need an ELI5 one of these days; I still can't make it click in my head just how is it that gravity (and static magnets) can pull stuff seemingly "for free".