(January 18, 2015 at 10:26 am)Alex K Wrote: I don't see how pockets of truly unpredictable behavior should be able to arise any more than pockets of violation of energy conservation can arise.
It's not a violation of the conservation of energy.
It's a small region in which complexity is increasing, order is increasing, energy available for work is increasing - all at the expense of increased entropy in another (larger?) part of the system. Energy is not magically being created, it's just that the process of energy diffusion across the entire system is not a smooth, linear progression. It's turbulent.
This turbulence allows for the increase of complexity in a small part of the whole, along with an increase in available energy in a small part of the whole. This is balanced by a decrease of complexity and energy elsewhere. It's really not a difficult idea. Crystals form in small pockets on Earth while mountains crumble (he said, speaking allegorically).
Life is the opposite of entropy - but it's only possible because the entropic system is turbulent. It's a temporary phenomenon. We're here, surrounded by examples of increased complexity and decreased entropy, typing messages on keyboards that can only exist because the Sun is pouring energy into the earth, creating the illusion of "swimming upstream." And in fact for a short time, taking advantage of small eddies, we can swim upstream. Not very far or fast, but it's a bit more than simply treading water. Since the Earth is not a closed system, 2LOT is not threatened.
Complexity, turbulence, emergent properties - all part of the greater inexorable march towards heat-death, or wherever it is that the Universe is headed. It's the incredible messiness of it all that allows these seeming paradoxes.
