Eli5: what is entropy?
In: 1
Entropy is randomness.
The reason entropy breaks things down is that randomness, over time, breaks things, but most things don’t *un-break* on their own. If a rock splits in half, it stays split forever, functionally. Same with many other things, if a thing can eventually fall apart, then eventually, infinite random chance will mean the perfect conditions for it to do so happen.
Even things that *can* fix themselves break down eventually. You see, the processes of healing introduce randomness into the healed bits. So the new skin over a healed cut is ever so slightly different from the old. Over time, this *eventually* means it will “forget” how to heal as well, as the new skin is missing little bits of the process of self healing. This is the effects of aging, and is why older folks don’t heal as well.
So eventually, that means *everything*, eventually, falls apart. This obviously is a pretty long “eventually” though.
To sum up, randomness breaks things, and nothing we know of can fix itself forever. So everything will, eventually, be worn down.
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