"Humans can reduce entropy in one part of a physical system, while the entropy of the overall system increases."
In her conversation with Lex Fridman, physicist Janna Levin explains how living organisms create local pockets of lower entropy through processes that increase entropy in the larger system. The discussion occurs around 1h50m24s in the official transcript, corresponding approximately to the later timestamp in the supplied Pocket Casts recording. This gives the book a thermodynamic analogy for local improvements that come with broader systemic costs, without equating physical entropy directly with organizational complexity.