Hi CTD

Well you’ve almost got it right, entropy is about the state of the matter and energy in a unit of space. If you take a given amount of matter and energy in a given volume of space and you increase the volume of the space you decrease the entropy per unit this will allow the energy, in the form of radiation, to travel away from the matter cooling it and thus reducing it’s specific entropy thus increasing the order of the matter within that volume. That’s what 2LoT says for an expanding universe and for any given unit of space. Originally the universe was very small indeed, there was too much energy per unit of space for any matter or information to exist, all there was was energy. As the universe expanded and the energy per unit of space decreased a time was reached where matter could condense and order was increased. The total entropy of the whole system continued to rise exactly as 2LoT says but the specific entropy of the matter within the system decreased. If this were not true, and 2LoT is considered a Law not just a theory as it is so very well tested, then we would not exist as there would still be no matter or information in the universe. That there is matter at all in the universe proves that 2LoT works and order can arise in an expanding universe exactly as it predicts.

In fact, if you want to remove entropy from any region of space, you just need to remove the matter.

True enough but the entropy of empty space is not very interesting, what is interesting is the entropy of matter containing systems. Matter containing systems can produce increased order in an expanding universe according to 2LoT, that is an interesting fact of this universe.

Information isn't even a physical property.

That’s an interesting point, information is not a physical property but it is held within the ordering of physical objects, ordering which increases as entropy drops but you are correct it is not in itself a physical property. Likewise information can not exist without a physical medium be that matter or energy, it is dependant on the orderliness of matter/energy for its continued existence. At maximum entropy matter can not store any information thus the link between entropy and information. At maximum entropy, when this universe first began, it could contain no information at all.

Some definitions of information require it to be purposeful and some don't. But purposeless 'information' never accomplishes anything, so discussing it is moot.

You say a lot here but does it actually mean anything? What is purposeful information as opposed to purposeless information? ToE fine tunes organisms to fit their environment, we can watch it do this in real time in the wild and in the lab so we know it’s true but is the information it pulls from the environment to shame these organisms purposeful?

We all know that under any definition, some information is purposeful. It exists, yet there is no origin available in a purposeless cosmos.

Are you sure about this, organisms pull purposeless information from their environments and put it to work for their own ends thus giving it purpose. The only intelligence required is that which evolution has invented in the organisms which are capable of mentally modelling the world around them as a short cut to making a living in it. But that’s not what you mean by purposeful information is it CTD. Your actual definition, I suspect, will turn out to be question begging and so a fallacy at its root if you are honest enough to examine it in depth.

In reason

Russell