One of the things he spoke about was the belief that entropy meant that our personal lives were destined to go to shit.

I recognized that same belief from my own life. I had discarded it, believing it was applicable to physics but not human beings.

I found this Wired article [1] and sent it to him. (He was the kind of person who responded to feed-your-brain kind of stuff like that, so it was not as tone-deaf a move as you might think.) We also did a great deal of talking, and, yes, I tried to do whatever I could to also get him to professionals' care.

Given that HN has a lot of learned people about it, I am curious about how people have dealt with this concept - smart people applying the concept of 'entropy' in physics to justify deep pessimism for personal lives' outcome.

This situation seems popular enough that others here would've encountered this before, too.

[1] - http://archive.today/PLvun