The Second Law defines the ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order. An underappreciation of the inherent tendency toward disorder, and a failure to appreciate the precious niches of order we carve out, are a major source of human folly.... I see irony, not entropy. Here's why: to "carve out refuges of beneficial order" introduces, by the very process of "carving," a potential increase in entropy in the region outside of the refuges, whether that region is physical-chemical, informational, or aesthetic. Entropy, from the very beginning of its recognition and definition, is but part of a mathematical equation measuring an environment, a space, a domain in which energy is dispersed evenly throughout; if the energy is evenly dispersed, a measured quantity, for example, temperature, in any part of the surrounding region, is the same everywhere in that region.
If I enter into a virtual discourse, however cultivated and enlightened (such as this post), the visual signals I receive and read from my flat screen take some degree of concentration to recognize individual letters, words, concepts; at every intervening point and moment require energy, part of which is converted to heat -- energy which is no longer be available to do the work of computing, displaying, and reading.
The presence of that heat is readily recognized by the sound of the fan (in the desktop or laptop) or warm spots of the underside of the laptop. Ah! one might exclaim, couldn't that heat inside the house help warm it when its cold outside? Yes, reducing in time, however minusculely, the prompting of the thermostat to turn on the furnace, but there will still be escape of some of that heat from the inside to the outside of the building.
Another place to recognize heat produced as a byproduct by another device, is the heated air blowing from the back of the refrigerator into the larger kitchen. (Where does that heat come from? It is "removed" from the steaks, chicken breasts, cheese, milk ... whatever is inside of the appliance.) More importantly, heat energy is actually the vibration of molecules, which increases the temperature as the vibrations become faster and more powerful.
Some physicists and physical chemists define entropy as an increase in disorder. More than any other concept, the idea of disorder seems to have propagated into the non-scientific discourse, based, for example. on an imagined dormitory room; upon move-in, there is some manifestation of order -- books on the shelves, clothes in the drawers (arranged by the freshman's mother), shirts, pants, jeans hanging in the closet, towels on the racks on the back of the closet door... Three months, two months... whatever, that arrangement is gone. Therefore, entropy has increased.
The problem with the dorm room analogy is the presumption of primary order. The freshman's mother defines order according to her standards; perhaps the student son even agrees that things are orderly as she defines it. To maintain that order, however, requires effort -- energy -- perhaps even more than just allowing things to fall where they may. Conversely, the loss of that original arrangement might require additional effort to locate desired objects (where did I put that polo?) in the future. In either case, more energy is required, both physical (folding and organizing or plowing through the pile) and mental; and part of that energy is lost to the environment. The presumption that spending time organizing and re-organizing (after each laundry load emerges from the clothes dryer) involves less effort than plowing through a disorganized pile each morning may be correct -- over time, perhaps less net energy is required if an arrangement is maintained -- or it may not (organizing may require a lot of time and thought: arrange by object kind, size, color...? Hang matching shirt and pants together or all shirts separately from all pants?) Of course, wearing the same outfit day after day should result in less net energy loss than all that effort to organize after each dryer load (especially if each dryer load occurs less often). So much for the dorm room...
To characterize entropy in terms of (relative) disorder requires an accepted standard for order: the freshman's mother's standards, foundational scientific laws, logical premises...
