Russ Abbott wrote circa 10-07-19 03:54 PM:
  Under the information-based view of entropy a heat death universe
would have high entropy because it would take a large amount of
information--a great many bits--to capture it.  One would have to say
where each bit of material is. Since each bit is more or less randomly
located, there is no way to compress that information. On the other
hand, if all matter were compressed into a single point, it would take
very little--very few bits--to record that state of the universe.

You seem to be repeating things I just said. ;-)

But that's not the interesting part of what I said. The interesting part is that no work can be done in either case. In fact, neither end of the spectrum is interesting at all. Interestingness lies between heat death and singularity.

A further interesting thing (perhaps only to my self-gratifying thoughts) is that the maximal entropy heat death actually _can_ be described with very little information. All it takes is a uniform RNG distribution. I can write that program in... 5 minutes! ;-)

Seriously though, it all depends on what layer, stance, or aspect taken by the observer. And if the universe is in a state of heat death, there is no observer. So, again, the concept of "entropy" becomes meaningless in heat death. Entropy is only meaningful in between the heat death and the singularity. I.e. it's only a relative term. It's degenerate in any absolute/universal context.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com


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