Is Entropy Overhyped?

Entropy is one of the most hyped concepts in physics, but it's defining is as disordered as entropy itself--and this is its worst definition.  

In normal language, entropy is defined as disorder, which means chaos or lack of order. In thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, it refers to the increasing unpredictability of a given molecule's position and internal kinetic energies as entropy inexorably rises. When any quantity of net energy is exchanged between two systems isolated from the rest of the Universe, total energy remains the same (the first law of thermodynamics), but that energy is now dispersed among more molecules and space, increasing the number of ways that energy can manifest itself. This is true and not unimportant, but the use of the word disorder is misleading at best. 

When an ideal gas undergoes a thermodynamic process, the gas usually looks very disordered, bouncing around like a mass of imprisoned ghosts trying to break free. When equilibrium is reached, this is the highest state of the entropy of the Universe and often the gas, as well; but it's also usually when the gas appears most ordered. 

This is a recipe for unnecessary confusion. They could could call it STATISTICAL disorder--but for some reason, they do not (if there's an answer, I'd love to know it). 

Some define it as a measure of lost work (in a given process/what's available for work in the Universe in general) or a measure of the dissipation of the Universe's energy (note the word measure: Entropy doesn't actually equal these things). In the case of the former, however, at least in mechanical engineering thermodynamics, I've found that integrating Tds to find lost work is usually redundant. In general, the necessary information can either be found by other means, or has necessarily already been calculated. 

In mechanical engineering, entropy is essentially just a synonym for inefficiency, and unlike entropy, inefficiency is equal to inefficiency, not merely a measurement of it.

Sometimes, entropy becomes the explanation for the very things that explain entropy. You can't (truly) use entropy to prove the direction of heat's flow or the impossibility of a more efficient cyclical process than the Carnot cycle, for the latter is largely justified by thermal directionality--which, in turn, is due to a mechanical force/energy gradient--and the Carnot Cycle is where dQ/T comes from. 

Some talk about the Universe "running down" and "time decaying." Eventually, the Universe's energy could be completely dissipated, and the dispersion of gas molecules has an absolute temporal direction, since they'll never spontaneously come together. These definitions and arguments may have relevance in cosmology, but I don't see much place for them otherwise, at least not macroscopically. In fact, having this cosmological grandiosity associated with entropy, along with its alluring name and definition, conveys subtle misconceptions about its place in the applications of thermodynamics. Students, I suspect, expect to find useful and fascinating nuances underlying the concept that simply aren't there, leading to confusion.  

I'd define entropy as a type of conservation of energy constraint that tells you whether a process and/or transformation is possible, efficient, or likely. Path independent thermodynamic variables--like temperature, volume, pressure, and enthalpy--allow you to make calculations before and after highly complex processes that wouldn't otherwise be possible, and entropy is one such variable. Entropy, in turn, allows for the construction of other path-independent variables like Gibbs free energy, which has its own applications; and the more quantifiable connections between variables, the easier is to make calculations.   

While it's fine to say entropy and the second law are useful and necessary, does that really justify all the hype? I say no--but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.