No, all you need is to observe things. Be it a simple detector or conscious observer, you've extracted information from the environment. The observation implies existence, what observed it is inconsequential.

So is entropy really about energy, or information? Or is there any difference.

Statistics.

Imagine any given configuration of the universe. Of all possible changes to a new configuration (think Levenshtein distance) from that configuration there’s a large set of “equivalent” (in the aggregate) configurations, let’s call those the future. There is a smaller set of configurations which we would ascribe some special character too, such as being somewhat orderly let’s call those the past. the set of possible configurations encoding a broken pot are larger then the set encodings an unbroken one. But the state brokenness of the pot is entirely a subjective things, without that interpretation of the encoding they are equally random

Now if you are a “process”, a kind of pattern that can be identified as the same entity in several of those configurations, it would seem necessary for that pattern to follow some rule in which most of those “future” configurations would retain its unique characteristic.

So if you throw a dart into this mess of configurations and hit such an entity, selecting any direction to move from that point at random would most likely give you a configuration with higher entropy, but in which this particular pattern would be retained.

Some patterns would have a higher chance than other of being traceable along those changes, perhaps they encode a kind of anticipation of likely futures yielding a rules set which a higher likelihood of existing from one configuration to the next. Let’s call this patterns “living”

I'm assuming existence as a premise to avoid circularity. I'm actually more interested in why the universe isn't static, i.e. the idea that state change and the arrow of time might arise from evaluative processes as the fundamental causal structure.

When it comes to the question of whether consciousness is orthogonal to existence. I'm inclined to the position that it's an emergent property of matter, in particular taking exception to human exceptionalism. I acknowledge this is sailing damn close to the Chinese Room argument.

> Does the universe require perception in order for there to be existence?

If you use big bang theory, the universe existed prior to observers perceiving it. So there was existence and no perception. Perception appears to have evolved out of existence. The story of the big bang is sort of neat. It looks like many fundamental particles didn't exist until the time was right for them to come into being.

> If you use big bang theory, the universe existed prior to observers perceiving it.

That would depend on the definition of perception. Does a nail perceive being struck by the hammer? To say otherwise would presume that humanity's form awareness is somehow special, and not simply a more complicated interaction between ourselves and the universe than is the nail's with the hammer.

I suspect you might be right, but it could water down the term. In such a case, everything is perceiving all the time.

I was using the more traditional definition of perception.

That's why physicists talk about interaction rather than perception.

That is exactly the intended sense of perception in my statement.

You have, er, nailed it

Given that perception is a material process in-and-of the universe itself, it all gets a bit circular.