What I find compelling is how it works at low and high levels. Low level because we dissipate energy just by being a living creature. And the high level because as you said, we as a civilization can't seem to escape it, and want to use pockets of low entropy like mineral veins and fuels. Until all is spent i guess. You don't mention how unsympathetic that purpose is, though. At that point any purpose you make for yourself is better than that one even if it's true.
> At that point any purpose you make for yourself is better than that one even if it's true.
Absolutely, let's not let thermodynamics be the final word on the topic.
But suppose we did... To anybody who would cite this as a reason to drill more oil, I'd say that part of the equation is that we must also survive. In 10k years there will still be plenty of useful sunlight falling on the planet. Ideally we'll be around then, harnessing it to throw really great parties or whatever. If we aren't choosy about our fuel sources in the near term we might not be around to continue at this purpose in the long term.
I wouldn't be so sure. You'd still need to mine for the batteries and the rest of the infrastructure.... And then plastics also dissipate into micro and nanoplastics possibly robbing life of vitality. But again, this involves predicting things that never happened yet, so I might be very wrong for reasons I don't consider.
Oh I'm not trying to make any claims about any type of energy infrastructure in particular.
I'm just saying that even if the game is merely to contribute as much as possible to this Big Bang that we're living in, we're still gonna lose if we focus on short term gains a the expense of our survival.