In a star lighter elements combine to form heavier ones via nuclear fusion. Huge amounts of heat are released, the potential energy decreases, and entropy increases. The heavier elements have more complex chemical properties, and are capable of vastly more complex reactions. For example a star can create carbon out of hydrogen. Carbon can form complex molecules like DNA which in turn can evolve from cellular life to intelligent life (and beyond?). So to summarize, I think an increase in complexity results from an increase in entropy.

Black holes however do not depend on the usual chemical and nuclear reactions that lead to a decrease in potential energy, increase in entropy, and an increase in complexity. Black holes are objects so dense that not even heat can escape. Their evaporation lifetimes are so long that they will always have a net increase in mass, by pulling in matter, light, heat and whatever else is out there. Matter, light & heat are all smashed together in a black hole - some say into an infinitely dense singularity, but according to Hawkings equations I think such a thing would evaporate instantly and effectively not exist on any detectable timespan. The quasi-existence of such singularities means that small black holes decay into stable particles:

Quarks and leptons, which form protons and electrons, which form hydrogen and helium - the lightest elements with the highest potential energy and the lowest entropy.

The Schwarzchild radius of the universe is larger than the visible universe. So it is safe to assume that the universe is a black hole, a collection of matter bound gravitationally within a symbolic radius, and nothing, not even heat can escape. The observable universe is sprinkled with even more billions of far smaller black holes, and each one has the potential to grow, to recycle complex matter and heat back into simple primordial forms. This suggests a process that has been going on for an unimaginable timespan. It suggests that the universe on the largest possible scale has constant mass, constant total energy, and constant entropy. Only on small scales does entropy fluctuate, due to the bursting of stars and supernovas and black holes.

It also suggests that the universe is finite, that time is not coupled to space. That time is a false quantity that we simply use to measure the relative movement of particles. There is no law of conservation of time, like there is a law of conservation of mass-energy.

I'm beginning to see how science has created a plethora of possibly false ideas and dogma, such as Infinite Universe, Steady-State Universe, the Big Bang, the Big Crunch, the Big Bounce. Even quantum physics has led to incipient dogma such as Multiple Universes, The Implicate Order, The Holomovement. That's not to say that they are wrong entirely, but I am certain they may be only partially correct, and therefore partially *incorrect*, just the same with my ideas. Potential uncertainties in my own Black Hole Inflation hypothesis are that there is no beginning or end to the process, no "outside" to the bulk universe, no space beyond. It's conceivable that there is space beyond and it is as full and complex as our own. It's also conceivable that our universe is emergent from substrate, like a dream is emergent from an assemblage of brain cells. Can a dream affect the dreamer. Obviously yes, but only rarely. And the dream is often forgotten, or becomes more ordered upon awakening, upon connecting with and receiving sensory inputs from the outside.

Fascinating thoughts eh?