Monday, November 10, 2014

email to sean carroll

If life (not just DNA) continually expands the number of copies with great efficiency, then it can reside in the continually increasing top of a Carnot cycle, and thereby decrease entropy (more copies) at the expense of internal energy potentials, such as photons falling on Earth.  The common view is that life extracts free energy in order to be interesting (lower localized entropy), while adding net entropy to the universe. But the free energy utilized can be near zero if the internal energy life acquires is used primarily to decrease entropy via copies of itself.  0 = dU-T*d(S)  So the meaning of life would be to acquire as much internal energy to move (or stop) as much matter as possible in order to make as many copies as possible, to expand the venture.  The end result would a cold universe with a high degree of order, and no differing internal energy potentials.
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not sent:
 Since solar cells powering electrical motors are 1000 times more efficient than photosynthesis driving muscle, they may have an objectively higher moral claim to occupying the Earth, at least if you assume evolution is a good thing.  Being a product of it, who am I to say it isn't?  This is the economic problem of our times.
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