I suppose I’m not clear on the ‘difference’ between them- as far as I can tell, they’re basically the same. Maxwell’s Demon seems to be the standard tool for discussing the two and how they’re linked (you can come up with a system that’s arbitrarily good at playing the role of the demon, but the demon’s memory has to change from the initial state to the final state, and that results in the 2nd law holding).
The natural analog of a string of bits that are all 1 is a group of particles which all have exactly the same velocity- it shouldn’t be hard to see why the entropy is low in both cases.
More important than good explanations, of course, is purging your impression of them as arrogant. Or are you that good at manipulating your subtext?
[edit] Example:
After all, if your entire physical system degenerates into a mush with no order that you know nothing about then you say it is full of entropy.
Maximum entropy means something very specific, actually, and so it’s hardly true to say you know nothing about it. When someone’s gone through the beautiful process that leads to the Boltzmann distribution, and especially if they really get what’s going on, they are likely to take statements like that as evidence of ignorance.
More important than good explanations, of course, is purging your impression of them as arrogant.
Why? They are arrogant. They take take pride in their arrogance. It is a trait that is beneficial at times and detrimental at others. This isn’t a value judgement.
Or are you that good at manipulating your subtext?
I calibrate more through acceptance then self deception—although both can work.
Maxwell’s Demon seems to be the standard tool for discussing the two and how they’re linked (you can come up with a system that’s arbitrarily good at playing the role of the demon, but the demon’s memory has to change from the initial state to the final state, and that results in the 2nd law holding).
Thanks, that sounds like an interesting way to divert the conversation, one way or the other. It’s probably not something that I will encounter in conversation again but as a historical-edit-counterfactual that seems like a good solution.
Why? … I calibrate more through acceptance then self deception—although both can work.
Whatever works for you. Most people I know have put no effort into calibration, and I suggest self-deception or self-modification to them as it works better than unconscious acceptance, though perhaps not better than conscious acceptance.
They may be interested in original works; Landauer was the one that put forward the information entropy explanation of Maxwell’s Demon, but all I can find in a quick search is his 1961 paper on heat generated by irreversible logic operations, which is the underpinning of the argument that equal entropy is generated in the demon’s memory.
Actually, I had always heard that it was Szilard, back in 1929, that came up with the original idea. So says wikipedia.
I first heard of Szilard’s thought experiment back in high school from Pierce’s classic popularization of Shannon’s theory Symbols, Signals, and Noise. This book, which I strongly recommend, is now available free online. The best non-mathematical exposition of Shannon ever. (Well, there is some math, but it is pretty simple).
Szilard’s idea is pretty cool. A heat engine with a working fluid consisting of a very thin gas. How thin? A single molecule.
So, from my reading Szilard’s answer and Landauer’s answer are slightly different. But the descriptions on the page you linked vs. the Maxwell’s Demon page are slightly different, and so that may be the source of my impression. It seems that Szilard claimed that acquiring the information is where the entropy gets balanced, whereas Landauer claims that restoring the Demon to its original memory is where the entropy gets balanced. Regardless of whether or not both are correct / deserve to be called the ‘information entropy explanation’, Landauer’s is the one that inspired my original explanation.
I suppose I’m not clear on the ‘difference’ between them- as far as I can tell, they’re basically the same. Maxwell’s Demon seems to be the standard tool for discussing the two and how they’re linked (you can come up with a system that’s arbitrarily good at playing the role of the demon, but the demon’s memory has to change from the initial state to the final state, and that results in the 2nd law holding).
The natural analog of a string of bits that are all 1 is a group of particles which all have exactly the same velocity- it shouldn’t be hard to see why the entropy is low in both cases.
More important than good explanations, of course, is purging your impression of them as arrogant. Or are you that good at manipulating your subtext?
[edit] Example:
Maximum entropy means something very specific, actually, and so it’s hardly true to say you know nothing about it. When someone’s gone through the beautiful process that leads to the Boltzmann distribution, and especially if they really get what’s going on, they are likely to take statements like that as evidence of ignorance.
Why? They are arrogant. They take take pride in their arrogance. It is a trait that is beneficial at times and detrimental at others. This isn’t a value judgement.
I calibrate more through acceptance then self deception—although both can work.
Thanks, that sounds like an interesting way to divert the conversation, one way or the other. It’s probably not something that I will encounter in conversation again but as a historical-edit-counterfactual that seems like a good solution.
Whatever works for you. Most people I know have put no effort into calibration, and I suggest self-deception or self-modification to them as it works better than unconscious acceptance, though perhaps not better than conscious acceptance.
They may be interested in original works; Landauer was the one that put forward the information entropy explanation of Maxwell’s Demon, but all I can find in a quick search is his 1961 paper on heat generated by irreversible logic operations, which is the underpinning of the argument that equal entropy is generated in the demon’s memory.
Actually, I had always heard that it was Szilard, back in 1929, that came up with the original idea. So says wikipedia.
I first heard of Szilard’s thought experiment back in high school from Pierce’s classic popularization of Shannon’s theory Symbols, Signals, and Noise. This book, which I strongly recommend, is now available free online. The best non-mathematical exposition of Shannon ever. (Well, there is some math, but it is pretty simple).
Szilard’s idea is pretty cool. A heat engine with a working fluid consisting of a very thin gas. How thin? A single molecule.
So, from my reading Szilard’s answer and Landauer’s answer are slightly different. But the descriptions on the page you linked vs. the Maxwell’s Demon page are slightly different, and so that may be the source of my impression. It seems that Szilard claimed that acquiring the information is where the entropy gets balanced, whereas Landauer claims that restoring the Demon to its original memory is where the entropy gets balanced. Regardless of whether or not both are correct / deserve to be called the ‘information entropy explanation’, Landauer’s is the one that inspired my original explanation.