[John21]

[ QUOTE ]
However, it is an optimistic view, and when applied to extremely long timescales, this growth isn't necessary to combat entropy. What comes out of this growth may be the maturity and know-how necessary to resolve or violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.


[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting. I wonder if DNA could be an 'agent/function' of extropy.

If we consider DNA as a form of intelligence, we can look at our own use of intelligence to circumvent different laws of nature.

A crude example, but hopefully it will make my point:
In the progress of shipbuilding, wood was used instead of steel, because wood floats in water and steel sinks. But through observation we learned the "Law" of floatation to be that anything could float which, bulk for bulk, is lighter than the mass of liquid displaced by it. So now we make steel float by the very same law by which it sinks.

Intelligence didn't change the law, it merely provided conditions which do not spontaneously occur in nature.

So could it be possible that DNA acquired the intelligence to not change the 2nd law of thermal dynamics, but to provide conditions to make life float instead of sink ? In a very rough sense, making matter grow/live by the very law in which it decays/dies.

(I know it's a stretch to call DNA - intelligence. But I think it's fair to say that it is organized information - which could be a definition of intelligence.)