Hacker News Reader

I tell you how we find them: We are looking for an entropy source.

It may be in fact the meaning of live for humans to dissipate energy (Got this idea here: https://www.amazon.com/What-Your-Dangerous-Idea-Unthinkable/... )

It could also be an argument for bitcoin if criticized for too high energy consumption.

View on HN

I thought the meaning of life was negentropy. We seem to habitually build little corners of order in the eddies of the waves of entropy sloshing around. Even just by observing things.

If using entropy emission as the indicator, how would we distinguish the exhaust of life from any other energy source? Wouldn't it make sense to look for pockets of negative entropy or would those be hidden by all the opposite reactions?

Not a physicist obviously!

You can only decrease entropy locally by increasing total entropy, hence look for an entropy source.

Stars are the most productive entropy sources in our Universe.

I see some. Now, what?

I don't think you would look for life in a star. Neither would you look for life in a black hole (that is, as far as I know with basically no understanding, also an entropy source)

Yet, the only life we know of, in the whole Universe, is so close to a star as to depend upon heat from it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com