It has been a very long time (too long) since I studied the 2nd law or Shannon. It's all very veiled and foggy just now, however, I have often wondered if Entropy is fundamentally about ignorance, correlations, or something deeper?
On Thu, Jul 3, 2025 at 11:47 PM Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Long Suffering Friamers > > I think I have now managed to come up with a macrostate statement of a > phenomenon that requires entropy for its understanding. It parallels > Lincoln's aphorism about fooling all of the people. > > *Assuming friction free and quasistatic motion and total insulation where > appropriate:* > > *If you put a bunch of energy into a system by working on it,**you can > recover all that energy as work.* > > *If you put a bunch of energy into a system by heating it,**you can > recover all that energy as heating,* > > *If you put a bunch of energy into a system by working on it,** you can > recover all that energy as heating.* > > *But if you put a bunch of energy into a system by heating, you can NOT > recover all of that energy as work. * > > I think this is the asymmetry that requires the invention of entropy. > > Am I finally getting my Dux in a row? > > Nick > > -- > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology > Clark University > [email protected] > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
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