How come perment dele'n of info from our hard drive doesnt violate the law of cnservat'n of entropy?

Answer 1

Shannon Entropy is a measurement of information, so you might be confusing the matter, believing that there's a "Law of Conservation of Entropy", when there is no such thing, and then suggesting that it means that information is conserved. It doesn't follow. However, there's a branch of physics that speculates that the universe functions as a giant reversible computer or Turing machine, in which case it's said that information is conserved. But wiping out information on your hard disk would merely put the information somewhere else where nobody can find it, because then it could be in a different form of information like quantum information. And then again, there's also the distinction between information as a quantum measurable and quantum information, and while many may hold that quantum information is conserved, "quantum measurable" information is not. It's not a settled issue.

It should be noted that the idea of a "Law of Information" isn't widely accepted in the physics community, but it's certainly a favorite among Intelligent Design people. It's not something that has ever been proven, it has to be postulated.

Answer 2

Entropy isn't conserved. It increases.

Every action we take (even cleaning your room) increases the amount of entropy because of all the heat we create in doing it.

Beware simplistic arguements about what is and isn't allowed by the second law of thermodynamics. They are a favorite of bible beaters attacking evolution and many other stupid people.

Edit: that website below is a good example of what happens when people who don't know what they are talking about start talking about entropy. (By ignorant people I mean the author of the website, not the distinguished physicists he quotes in it).

People are entropy machines. The minimal amount of order we appear to be creating is completely swamped by the entropy from the work converted to heat. If you understand (numerically) what entropy really is, you realize that the entropy produced by converting work to thermal energy is many orders of magnitude greater than that which is decreased by the superficial ordering of a hard drive or any other man-made construct.

Answer 3

It actually obeys the laws of entropy, since organizing the magnetic domains on the harddisk violates entropy and require energy to do it. Entropy is the natural evening out of energy levels in the universe. Things man does constantly violate this flow. I don't believe there is a conservation of entropy and this site agrees http://www.nous.org.uk/entropy.html