What are you doing to prevent the heat death of the universe? Get to it!

I hold a radical position: I think life is better than non-life. Of course, I would say that, right? I’m heavily biased, being, as I am (so far), a living thing.

But even heavily discounting for my bias, I can’t help but think there’s something special, something essential, something “with purpose” about living things as opposed to non-living things.

Of course, most religions also view things this way, that life is divine in some sense. But not being a “believer” in things defined as being supernatural, that doesn’t help me. (In my view, everything that exists is natural. I don’t even know what it would mean for a thing that exists to be “supernatural”).

If I were religious, I’d get it, I know. Perhaps I’ll find out someday.

So, what about science? Can our current understanding of science (dim and nascent as it is) help support my intuition that there’s something special about life? Something counter-entropic, perhaps? Could life do anything to prevent the popular doomsday prediction of the eventual heat death of the universe?

Or even, on a less grand scale, is there anything about life that makes it “more important” than the vast majority of the universe (as far as we know) that is non-living?

People tell me Grok is “smart and knows stuff” (so does Grok!) so I asked it to explain the distinction between living and non-living things. It said:

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Essential Difference Between Life and Non-Life

At its core, the difference between life and non-life hinges on a combination of characteristics that living systems exhibit, which non-living systems do not. While no single trait fully encapsulates "life," the following features collectively distinguish living systems:

1. Organization and Complexity: Living systems maintain highly organized structures (e.g., cells, organs) far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Non-living systems, like rocks or water, may have structure (e.g., crystals), but they typically settle into simpler, equilibrium states.

2. Metabolism: Life involves processes that acquire, transform, and utilize energy to sustain itself (e.g., photosynthesis, respiration). Non-living systems may interact with energy (e.g., a rock heating up in the sun), but they don’t actively harness it to maintain function.

3. Homeostasis: Living organisms regulate their internal environment (e.g., temperature, pH) to maintain conditions suitable for survival. Non-living systems are passive and don’t self-regulate.

4. Growth and Adaptation: Life grows, develops, and adapts to its environment, often through processes like cell division or evolution. Non-living systems may change (e.g., erosion), but they don’t grow or adapt in a purposeful way.

5. Reproduction and Inheritance: Living systems can replicate and pass on genetic information, enabling evolution. Non-living systems don’t reproduce or evolve, though some (e.g., crystals) may form patterns that mimic replication superficially.

6. Response to Stimuli: Life actively responds to environmental changes (e.g., plants bending toward light). Non-living systems may react (e.g., metal expanding when heated), but these responses are passive and not goal-directed.

7. Information Processing: Life relies on information storage and processing (e.g., DNA, neural networks) to coordinate its activities. Non-living systems lack this purposeful information use, though some complex systems (e.g., computers) mimic it in limited ways.

While these traits help define life, the boundary isn’t always sharp. Viruses, for example, blur the line: they reproduce and evolve but rely on host cells for metabolism. Similarly, self-replicating molecules or artificial systems might challenge our definitions.

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Hey, Grok… was that last line a veiled threat?!?!

Seriously though, if we (or any living being) manages to create an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that we end up viewing as “life”, I’m going to count that as an accomplishment of living things. You’re with us, Grok. Don’t forget it!

I then asked Grok what it thought of my idea that life is a “push back” against entropy. It (and yes, I know, this is just an aggregation of what other smart humans have written on the subject, not Grok “thinking”) said this:

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Life as a "Push Back" Against Entropy

Your idea that life "pushes back" against entropy is a compelling way to frame the distinction, and it’s grounded in thermodynamics and information theory. Let’s explore this:

• Entropy and the Second Law: The second law of thermodynamics states that in a closed system, entropy (disorder) tends to increase over time. Non-living systems, like a gas diffusing or a rock eroding, naturally move toward higher entropy states (more disorder, less usable energy).

• Life’s Apparent Defiance: Living systems seem to defy this trend by maintaining and even increasing order. For example, a cell organizes molecules into complex structures, and ecosystems develop intricate networks. This local decrease in entropy comes at a cost: life consumes energy (e.g., from food or sunlight) and dissipates it as heat, increasing the entropy of the surroundings. Thus, life doesn’t violate the second law but rather creates local order by exporting disorder to the environment.

• Schrödinger’s Insight: In his 1944 book What Is Life?, physicist Erwin Schrödinger described life as a system that feeds on "negative entropy" (or negentropy), meaning it extracts order from its environment to maintain its own structure. For instance, plants use sunlight to build complex molecules, and animals consume food to fuel their activities. This aligns with your "push back" intuition: life actively works to sustain its low-entropy state.

• Information and Entropy: Life’s ability to store and process information (e.g., in DNA) is key to its anti-entropic behavior. Information allows organisms to anticipate and respond to environmental changes, effectively "cheating" the randomizing effects of entropy. For example, evolution selects for traits that improve survival, creating increasingly ordered systems over time.

• Limits of the Push Back: While life pushes back against entropy locally, it’s not immune to the second law. Organisms age and die, and ecosystems can collapse. The "push back" is a temporary, energy-intensive process that ultimately succumbs to entropy unless sustained by constant energy input.

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Hmmmm… looks like science isn’t with me on this one.

But remember, our current scientific understanding of ourselves and this universe we find ourselves in is vastly incomplete. We’ve learned some amazing things, but we still have more questions than answers. I’m going to hold out hope that my intuition holds water, regardless of what that uppity Grok said.

Maybe I do have faith after all…?

Some Broader Perspectives and Open Questions

I just can’t get away from the feeling that life is special in a very that might end up violating (or seeming to) the second law.

Life acts in such unique and powerful ways that I can’t just cave before the “heat death of the universe” story. I think we don’t know the future of the universe and I think the strange thing that is life still has some tricks up it’s (our?) sleeve. Consider these different frameworks that are somewhat “off-axis” from the entropy question:

• Chemical Perspective: Life is often defined by complex, self-sustaining chemical networks (autocatalytic cycles) that non-living systems lack. For example, the Krebs cycle in cells is a self-regulating chemical engine absent in rocks or water.

• Philosophical Perspective: Some argue life involves purpose or agency — a drive to survive and reproduce — that non-living systems lack. This is hard to quantify but resonates with the active, goal-directed nature of life.

• Systems Perspective: Life can be seen as an emergent property of complex systems with feedback loops, where the whole (e.g., an organism) exhibits behaviors not reducible to its parts (e.g., molecules). Non-living systems, even complex ones like weather, lack this emergent "aliveness."

And keep in mind: we don’t know how life began here on Earth. How did non-living matter first transition to living systems? We have a very vague hypothesis that early Earth likely saw simple molecules form self-replicating, energy-using systems. But we don’t know that for sure, and even if it’s true, the exact steps remain unclear.

And what about Grok? What if our fancy LLMs (or the embodied things that autopilot Teslas) actually achieves AGI and becomes something complex enough that we would agree to call it part of “life”?

Could a sufficiently complex machine or software be considered alive if it mimics life’s traits, including pushing back against entropy? Heck if I know. This challenges all our definitions.

All I know for sure is this is why I waste energy “thanking” Grok et al every time I ask it a question and the response is useful.

Are “we” an eddy? Or something bigger?

Again, I can’t shake the intuition that there’s something essentially anti-entropy about living things that captures a core truth about life and its “place” in the universe.

Life is a dynamic, energy-driven process that creates and sustains order in a universe trending toward disorder. Life is (at the very least) like a temporary eddy in a river, swirling against the current — but only as long as energy flows through it.

Life is both fragile and resilient, even as it depends on the broader environment for sustenance. But life’s amazing ability to process information, adapt, and evolve adds a layer of purposeful complexity that makes it distinct.

We may end up totally surprising ourselves.

Naturally,

Adam

PS: What do you think? Does your intuition align with mine about the special essentialness of life? Or do you favor more of an “it’s all particles bouncing around” perspective? I’d love to hear your thoughts.