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by bmitc 1029 days ago
> It's not like the matter has some goal of dissipating the energy

Doesn't it, though? Everything is thought to be tending towards higher entropy, and the dissipation of heat helps accomplish that.

1 comments

No, because that higher entropy is developing regardless. The energy will eventually hit and heat up something, and who cares where it does?

There's no reason I can see why atoms would spontaneously rearrange to try to help that along in their local spot. It's not something that needs any help. Entropy increases, but there's no law that says it always increases as quickly as possible, as soon as possible. It just happens as physics describes it.

Thanks for the clarification, as I see what you're arguing now. It increases but nothing says that it increases as effectively or efficiently as possible.

Is that part of what these new theories are arguing though, where they are claiming that the universe does behave that way? Or is it this game where under certain conditions, molecules begin to self-assemble and thus decrease the local entropy but then must do so in a way to account for that and increase the local entropy (implying efficient heat dissipation), hence life?