I'd like to point out the other interpretation of probabilistic mechanics - and I can do this without the notion of entropy or thermodynamics ... except that it can also be described in those terms etc...
Take two ideas, like your SO's name and your SO's phone number, or any other two ideas. Call them A and B. To write A, your SO's name, in yopur address book does not use it up - you can still write the name in other places, like the bathroom walls, kitchen ceiling, or on checks randomly gathered at the bank.
Putting information B, the phone number, in your book does not use it up either. You can still add that to the scribble in your bathroom - "For a good time call (111) 555-1212. Ask for Godzilla." or whatever pleases you.
To manipulate information in a manner that does not get it used up is called "an operation with replacement", meaning that as fast as you use the information, it is available to be used elsewhere as well.
Let's start with the information lying about on slips of paper. Now count the ways of getting information A. If we exclude the rest of the world and simply stick to the place you have your address book, then there is some probability that you will accidently discover this information, by chance alone. There is an equal chance of discovering information B.
Now, take both information A, your SO's name, and information B, thir phone number, and write them in your book. Two things occur:
(1) You have now increased the number of instances of the information, which means that it is now more probable that as you blunder about, the chances of encountering that information have increased. Because the information is now more probable than it was before, we say that the state of forming combinations leads to a reality that is more probable than the state prior to forming the combinations.
(2) The joined information, A + B now has properties that the initial bits of information did not have. That is called synergy. It means that something new has been added. Like putting a basket of parts together from one of those boxes marked 'Some Assembly Required" - and a few hours later having a bicycle, or a manure spreader.
We now come to a division of the ways of looking at things - In the traditional perspective, we look at the mixing of the parts as being an aspect of the initial basket of stuff. We ignore synergies. That way, we wind up with the same number of parts as we had when we began, and we have Boltzmann's statistics, and the usual description of entropy.
However, let's look at the properties of the parts, rather than at the parts themselves. For convenience, let's call every term that we can discover by a separate name, and give it a separate and distinct identity. In that way, color is distinct property. Size is a distinct property. Mass is a distinct property. And, after we have analyzed things as well as possible, we have a basket of properties, the attributes by which a thing is known. And, since all relationships occur by joining attributes, when we add a new gizmo to an old gadget, we create a few new properties by synergy. Synergy is simply creation of new attributes of the collective by joining properties of the parts that go into it.
Now, when we are counting the properties of some collective that is evolving, if it can add its parts together, it gives back more properties than went into it. "Name A" differs from "Number B", and "Name and Number A+B" differs from both of them.
So in this approach to stability of cumulative aggregates, the most stable state is that inw hich the maximum number of combinations has occurred, because that distributes the information as much as possible, creating a maximum number of new ways to obtain it. Having increased the number of presentations, the attrutes of the aggregate have increased their probability, which is essentially the same as their dynamic stability.
So here we have another way to view statistical thermodynmic processes. The first way is equal numbers in varied arrangements. The second way is increasing numbers in every possible arrangement. (And, of course, that means that every change leads to a whole bunch of additional changes that can be made - it's a never ending forward going sequence of creation.) It is this second way to view things that I suggest as a cosmogenetic process.
My support for this is that this process can be modelled as an iterated complexion, and it (experimentally!) fits nearly perfectly with the generation of knowledge in society. I suggest that it also fits what we view as the material world, but that the material world is actually made of information, and not material, so that combinations with replacement always occur.
Of course, not all possible properties of everything will be present everywhere at the same time. Some properties of the world remain hidden due to the way we live and look at them.
As I write this I feel a bit like one of Harry Potter's inept friends trying to wave my wand and get a little universe hovering in the air - except that it keeps going Pffft! and making a puff of smoke as it vanishes. However, maybe I'm gaining a bit on the problem of expression.
dave