"the second “law” of thermodynamics is not a fact but a statistical statement. Boltzmann showed that because certain processes do not seem to occur – for example the spontaneous conversion of heat into mechanical energy – does not mean they are impossible, but extremely unlikely. In microscopic systems consisting of only a few molecules, the second law is violated regularly, but in macroscopic systems which consist of vast numbers of molecules, the probability that entropy will increase becomes virtual certainty."

especially on this part:
- "In microscopic systems consisting of only a few molecules, the second law is violated regularly"

Here, I disagree. The 2nd law of thermodynamics does not say anything about what is going on in certain open (smaller or bigger) systems, but it tells us about entropy growth on universal scale.

Hence, in a small system, where "dissipative structures" (I. Prigogine's term) are generated / self-organizing, entropy is exported out of this systems, but overall, in universal scale, entropy is increasing: a) because the dissipative structures can only be generated because an external energy source proved an overcritical amount of energy into that system which causes a lot of entropy be generated within the energy source, e. g. the sun; b) while the system exhibiting dissipative structures is exporting entropy (otherwise not complex structures), this amount of entropy adds to the entropy resulting from a)

==> overall entropy increase, no violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

With best regards.

Dr. Bernhard Wessling (bernhard@bernhard-wessling.com)

P.S.: may I add a kind of personal note, but no need to delete it because it is known anyway for those who look at my web site (www.bernhard-wessling.com) - I am happy to get to know about you and your work, and I was surprised to see that you bought a 100 acre farm, therefore my note to you
a) as a sideline work, I was always involved in nature and species protection (organized crane protection in a nature preserve near Hamburg / Germany, species protection by ecosystem protection, like you are promoting it)
b) this developed into crane research and an active involvement into the Whooping Crane Recovery project in US / Canada; I wrote a book about this, you can find it here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-98283-6 and on my web site
c) as another sideline project, I invested into a biologically working farm, small to begin with, and we developed it becoming quite a big bio farm, working now on 450 hectares rented land (= 1,112 acres, if my calculator tells me the "truth"), 90 people, 7 of our own "farm shops", 5 of which in Hamburg, and more than 1,000 members in our CSA groups.

2: Bootstrap Paradox
A Bootstrap Paradox is a type of paradox in which an object, person, or piece of information sent back in time results in an infinite loop where the object has no discernible origin, and exists without ever being created. It is also known as an Ontological Paradox, as ontology is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being or existence.

– Information: George Lucas traveling back in time and giving himself the scripts for the Star War movies which he then goes on to direct and gain great fame for would create a bootstrap paradox involving information, as the scripts have no true point of creation or origin.

– Person: A bootstrap paradox involving a person could be, say, a 20-year-old male time traveler who goes back 21 years, meets a woman, has an affair, and returns home three months later without knowing the woman was pregnant. Her child grows up to be the 20-year-old time traveler, who travels back 21 years through time, meets a woman, and so on. American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote a strange short story involving a sexual paradox in his 1959 classic “All You Zombies.”

These ontological paradoxes imply that the future, present, and past are not defined, thus giving scientists an obvious problem on how to then pinpoint the “origin” of anything, a word customarily referring to the past, but now rendered meaningless. Further questions arise as to how the object/data was created, and by whom. Nevertheless, Einstein’s field equations allow for the possibility of closed time loops, with Kip Thorne the first theoretical physicist to recognize traversable wormholes and backward time travel as being theoretically possible under certain conditions.

Movies: Examples of bootstrap paradoxes in the movies include Somewhere in Time (1980), Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), the Terminator movies, and Time Lapse (2014). The Netflix series Dark (2017-19) also features a book called ‘A Journey Through Time’ which presents another classic example of a bootstrap paradox.
Books: Examples of bootstrap paradoxes in books include Michael Moorcock’s ‘Behold The Man’, Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates, and Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps”

3: Grandfather Paradox
5 Paradoxes Of Time Travel ExplainedThe Grandfather Paradox concerns ‘self-inconsistent solutions’ to a timeline’s history caused by traveling back in time. For example, if you traveled to the past and killed your grandfather, you would never have been born and would not have been able to travel to the past – a paradox.

Let’s say you did decide to kill your grandfather because he created a dynasty that ruined the world. You figure if you knock him off before he meets your grandmother then the whole family line (including you) will vanish and the world will be a better place. According to theoretical physicists, the situation could play out as follows:

– Timeline protection hypothesis: You pop back in time, walk up to him, and point a revolver at his head. You pull the trigger but the gun fails to fire. Click! Click! Click! The bullets in the chamber have dents in the firing caps. You point the gun elsewhere and pull the trigger. Bang! Point it at your grandfather.. Click! Click! Click! So you try another method to kill him, but that only leads to scars that in later life he attributed to the world’s worst mugger. You can do many things as long as they’re not fatal until you are chased off by a policeman.

– Multiple universes hypothesis: You pop back in time, walk up to him, and point a revolver at his head. You pull the trigger and Boom! The deed is done. You return to the “present,” but you never existed here. Everything about you has been erased, including your family, friends, home, possessions, bank account, and history. You’ve entered a timeline where you never existed. Scientists entertain the possibility that you have now created an alternate timeline or entered a parallel universe.

Movies: Example of the Grandfather Paradox in movies include Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part II (1989), and Back to the Future Part III (1990).
Books: Example of the Grandfather Paradox in books include Dr. Quantum in the Grandfather Paradox by Fred Alan Wolf, The Grandfather Paradox by Steven Burgauer, and Future Times Three (1944) by René Barjavel, the very first treatment of a grandfather paradox in a novel.

4: Let’s Kill Hitler Paradox
Similar to the Grandfather Paradox which paradoxically prevents your own birth, the Killing Hitler paradox erases your own reason for going back in time to kill him. Furthermore, while killing Grandpa might have a limited “butterfly effect,” killing Hitler would have far-reaching consequences for everyone in the world, even if only for the fact you studied him in school.

The paradox itself arises from the idea that if you were successful, then there would be no reason to time travel in the first place. If you killed Hitler then none of his actions would trickle down through history and cause you to want to make the attempt.

Movies/Shows: By far the best treatment for this notion occurred in a Twilight Zone episode called Cradle of Darkness which sums up the difficulties involved in trying to change history, with another being an episode of Dr Who called ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’.
Books: Examples of the Let’s Kill Hitler Paradox in books include How to Kill Hitler: A Guide For Time Travelers by Andrew Stanek, and the graphic novel I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason.
5: Polchinski’s Paradox
American theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski proposed a time paradox scenario in which a billiard ball enters a wormhole, and emerges out the other end in the past just in time to collide with its younger version and stop it from going into the wormhole in the first place.

Polchinski’s paradox is taken seriously by physicists, as there is nothing in Einstein’s General Relativity to rule out the possibility of time travel, closed time-like curves (CTCs), or tunnels through space-time. Furthermore, it has the advantage of being based upon the laws of motion, without having to refer to the indeterministic concept of free will, and so presents a better research method for scientists to think about the paradox. When Joseph Polchinski proposed the paradox, he had Novikov’s Self-Consistency Principle in mind, which basically states that while time travel is possible, time paradoxes are forbidden.

However, a number of solutions have been formulated to avoid the inconsistencies Polchinski suggested, which essentially involves the billiard ball delivering a blow that changes its younger version’s course, but not enough to stop it from entering the wormhole. This solution is related to the ‘timeline-protection hypothesis’ which states that a probability distortion would occur in order to prevent a paradox from happening. This also helps explain why if you tried to time travel and murder your grandfather, something will always happen to make that impossible, thus preserving a consistent version of history.

Books: Paradoxes of Time Travel by Ryan Wasserman is a wide-ranging exploration of time and time travel, including Polchinski’s Paradox.

Once animals evolved, it was important that nutrients in their food be recycled, and not tied up in the bodies of animals.  Recycling in ecosystems has been necessary for sustainable ecosystem function.  Defecation is an important step in recycling.

About 75% of fecal material is water.  A large proportion of the solid matter in feces consists of bacteria. Bacteria in the gut intestinal tract produce enzymes that break down cellulose, cholesterol, inorganic nutrients, and proteins into compounds that can pass through the intestinal wall.  However, some of these compounds are used by the bacteria themselves to build their own structure.  These compounds are lost to animals when bacteria are defecated.

 Losing all these molecules instead of retaining and using them seems like a very inefficient use of food. Why are animals so wasteful? Why does not the digestive system retain all the bacterial material until it all breaks down and nutrients are absorbed through the intestine wall? One reason animals poop may be to get rid of pathogenic bacteria.

From an ecosystem perspective, the reason for defecation is that it is necessary to maintain nutrient flow to plants. Nutrients bound in the structure of the defecated bacteria are released by soil bacteria, rendering the nutrients available to plants. If all the nutrients were to be bound up in animal biomass, none would be available for autotrophs growing in the soil. The whole system would come to a stop.   Leakage is necessary to keep the system going. “Inefficiency” at the organism scale is “efficiency” at the ecosystem scale.

Reply to Comment 1

The thermodynamic view says that the purpose of life is to reduce the energy gradient between solar energy entering the Earth and heat radiating out. That is a difficult premise for people to accept. Therefore, religion was invented so that people could feel better about the struggles they were enduring. That is why Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. Psychological counseling also was invented to help people create a reason to keep on living.

Reply to Comment 2

The idea of group selection and group consciousness is rejected by biologists who believe that natural selection is based solely on reproductive success. These scientists say that evolutionary selection is based only on self-interest (see “The Selfish Gene”by Richard Dawkins). Thermodynamic theory says that selection is based on power output, and since groups are more powerful than individuals in war and other forms of competition for resources, there is a tendency for selection of individuals that are inclined for group and ecosystem interaction,  and group and ecosystem consciousness.

At Spring Valley Farm I remember how at the duck pond all the ducks would take actions together.

Another good example of an ecosystem consciousness was when some of the pigs were harvested at the farm, and stress was spreading through the remaining swine; in lieu of hiding for example  to avoid their fate- they started fornicating.