Actually, at Boskone last year, I found myself listening to a Russian fan named Leonid Korgowski who expounded at some length about a "4th Law of Thermodynamics", as derived by Ilya Prigogine.

The language is pretty abstruse, but the upshot of it is while entropy may be increasing, there's also a definite trend toward more complex systems.

He goes on about it in some detail in his blog, here:

http://www.pinknoise.net/2012/03/23/optimism-and-darkness-in-science-fiction/