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"From the physicist's point of view, Man seems to have no function except that of dissipating or degrading energy."

-- Henry Brooks Adams, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma.

Similar thoughts from Aldo Leopold, Howard Odum, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, and many others.

That's wrong though. Our function is to reproduce. That is literally the reason life is a thing - and it is opposite of entropy.

Reproduction is definitely a net increase in raw entropy. That's what is meant by "dissipating energy", I imagine.

Not information entropy

It sucks that the intuitive interpretation regarding both applications is completely inverted.