2nd post to philosophy group, modification from amazon post.

Here is an attempt to support what I'm saying with explicit physical meaning via the necessary math.  The meaning of life is to "violate" the 2nd law as much as possible by using energy in order to create more replicators (a reduction in entropy) without reducing free energy. From physics: F.E.=U-TS where food, replicator, and the ambient environment are all part of the system and at T temperature, and U is their total internal energy.  F.E. is a state variable so you calculate F.E. before and F.E. after and subtract to get change in F.E.  In the main, current replicators reduce the potential energy part of U (bond-breaking) and increase T so that F.E. is rapidly reduced. But my evolved intuition says the ideal replicator extracts from U food and uses it to move matter from the food and environment (ideally without increasing T) to create copies of itself, a more ordered state.  So U is reduced, T ideally does not increase (no waste heat), and S is decreased so that F.E. does not change. So whereas Schrodinger and others have said F.E. is the life-blood of life, I am saying the ideal life will maintain F.E. as much as possible while creating copies of itself. U typically is a potential energy (even as photons) that the replicator "digitally" discovers and extracts via complex evolved digital "thought" (mechanical pumping action in photosynthesis or bits in brains). Thoughtless random analog physical forces are not able to tap into these potential energy sources in reasonable time frame, such as un-burnt oil staying underground and fission not occurring rapidly.  Subsequent use of the unchanged F.E. that resulted from these highly intelligent replicators by future "dumb" replicators or the 2nd law itself would appear to occur more easily, more rapidly degrading the "smart" replicators. So it seems these ideal smart replicators would have a short period of expansion, and not have lasting chemical bonds.  There are complex arguments to modify this picture.  So although intelligent life seems to fight against the 2nd law, it may actually speed it up, but more complex reasoning may lead to a greater permanence that would seek to expand to other solar systems.