
Wayne Myrvold: A 2 Hour Deep Dive Into Entropy
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
00:00
Why 'Entropy = Disorder' Misleads
Wayne clarifies when disorder intuition aligns with entropy and gives counterexamples like cream-in-coffee and gravitational clumping.
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Episode notes
Philosopher of physics Wayne Myrvold reframes thermodynamics as a resource theory, arguing the slogan entropy always increases is a consequence of the second law, not the law itself, and that Gibbs and Boltzmann entropies answer different questions. We explore Maxwell's demon, Landauer erasure, free energy and fluctuations, macrostates vs microstates, disorder, ergodicity, cosmology and heat death, collapse theories, and even pedagogy and career advice.
00:00 Is entropy in the system or in our minds?
07:12 Thermodynamics as a resource theory of heat and power
18:24 Second law does not assume entropy; entropy defined by it
30:58 From caloric to molecular motion: history of entropy
39:04 Maxwell's insight: second law not absolute
48:11 Information as a resource; knowledge and entropy
1:00:53 Boltzmann vs Gibbs: different entropies, different questions
1:10:24 Maxwell's demon and Landauer's principle
1:25:02 Heat death of the universe?
1:30:19 Why equating entropy with disorder misleads
1:35:21 Ergodic hypothesis and its limited relevance
1:43:52 Statistical mechanics on shaky ground (like QFT)
1:50:50 Career advice: do not chase bandwagons
Resources:
- Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com
- Ted Jacobson [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3mhctWlXyV8
- Concerning Several Conveniently Applicable Forms For The Main Equations Of The Mechanical Heat Theory [Paper]: https://web.lemoyne.edu/giunta/Clausius1865.pdf
- John Norton [TOE]: https://youtu.be/Tghl6aS5A3M
- On An Absolute Thermometric Scale [Paper]: https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/2559_Therm_Stat_Mech/docs/Thomson_1848.pdf
- Carnot Efficiency: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Carnot_efficiency
- Maxwell's Talk On Molecules: https://victorianweb.org/science/maxwell/molecules.html
- Helmholtz Free Energy: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/helmholtz-free-energy
- Boltzmann Entropy: https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Western_Washington_University/Biophysical_Chemistry_(Smirnov_and_McCarty)/01%3A_Biochemical_Thermodynamics/1.05%3A_The_Boltzmann_Distribution_and_the_Statistical_Definition_of_Entropy
- Maxwell's Letter: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PH-CAVENDISH-P-00092/1
- Landauer's Principle: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S135521980300039X
- On A Universal Tendency In Nature To The Dissipation Of Mechanical Energy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786445208647126
- Neil Turok [TOE]: https://youtu.be/zNZCa1pVE20
- Roger Penrose [TOE]: https://youtu.be/sGm505TFMbU
- Sean Carroll [TOE]: https://youtu.be/9AoRxtYZrZo
- Understanding The Infinite [Book]: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Infinite-Shaughan-Lavine/dp/0674921178
- Classical Electrodynamics [Book]: https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Electrodynamics-John-David-Jackson/dp/1119770769
- Why Information Is Entropy [YouTube]: https://youtu.be/8Uilw9t-syQ
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