"Complexity emerges because of entropy"

 A

Bill Benzon's agreement:

• Emphasizes the key insight: "Complexity emerges because of entropy"
• Life is structure that climbs gradients; entropy provides the gradient itself

Alex Foxworthy's response:

• Confirms: "The gradient is the resource—life is one way the universe spends it"
• Structure rides the second law rather than fighting it
• Calls to "spend our allotted energy well"

Bill Benzon's follow-up:

• References his 1990 paper with David Hays: "A Note on Why Natural Selection Leads to Complexity"
• Core argument: Evolution yields complexity because the universe is inherently complex (per Prigogine's dissipative structures)
• Why complexity benefits survival:
  1. More efficient energy/matter extraction
  2. More flexible response to change
  3. More effective search
• Connects to Gibson's ecological psychology (advantages of sophisticated information processing)
• Notes computational theory insight: complex computers needed to efficiently perform complex computations