By having a MD in Engineering and a Physics PhD, following the same exact courses you recommend as potentially containing the answer and in fact finding no direct answer to these specific questions in them.
You could argue “the answer can be derived from that knowledge” and sure, if it exists it probably can, but that’s why I’m asking. Lots of theories can be derived from other knowledge. Most of machine learning can be derived from a basic knowledge of Bayes’ theorem and multivariate calculus, but that doesn’t make any math undergrad a ML expert. I was asking so that I could read any previous work on the topic. I might actually spend some more time thinking about approaches myself later, but wouldn’t do it without first knowing if I’m just reinventing the wheel, so I was probing for answers. I don’t think this is particularly weird or controversial.
Why do you believe there is one?
I don’t? I wondered if there might be one, and asked if anyone else knew any better.
Then on what basis do you “strongly disagree that just studying thermodynamics or statistical mechanics answers these questions, at least directly”?
How did you attain the knowledge for this?
By having a MD in Engineering and a Physics PhD, following the same exact courses you recommend as potentially containing the answer and in fact finding no direct answer to these specific questions in them.
You could argue “the answer can be derived from that knowledge” and sure, if it exists it probably can, but that’s why I’m asking. Lots of theories can be derived from other knowledge. Most of machine learning can be derived from a basic knowledge of Bayes’ theorem and multivariate calculus, but that doesn’t make any math undergrad a ML expert. I was asking so that I could read any previous work on the topic. I might actually spend some more time thinking about approaches myself later, but wouldn’t do it without first knowing if I’m just reinventing the wheel, so I was probing for answers. I don’t think this is particularly weird or controversial.