Entropy is big lately. A new paper on arxiv (The Entropic Lanscape, Bousso and Harnik) uses entropic principles to derive predictions about such things as the cosmological constant and the nature of entropic radiation. These predictions match well with observations in our corner of the universe and give a framework that applies to any part of the universe, even in other vacua. This paper relates to examinations of the vacuum lanscape that usually end up relying on anthropic arguments. In other words things are the way they are because we wouldn’t be here to observe them if they were different. Bousso and Harnik replace arguments like that with ones that favor the maximiztion of entropy.
Also in a comment to a previous post here Nisheeth points to his arxiv article (The relativity of theory, Nisheeth) where he describes a framework for deriving physical laws from information-theoretic first principles. He too relies on the maximiztion of entropy.