Quote from: Philip Hardcastle on January 02, 2013, 02:26:37 AM
set out to be rude to every person on this site that has engaged him

Also this seems unfair.  "Responded in kind to ever rude,arrogant posting of people like Bruce_TPU, lumen, Philip" might be more appropriate.

Quote from: Philip Hardcastle on January 02, 2013, 02:26:37 AM
To the moderator/administrator,


Sarkeizen has maliciously libelled me and set out to be rude to every person on this site that has engaged him, I would like his details emailed to me and I believe he should be banned.

I think you have libelled each other a number of times if you both wanted to keep score!
I suspect that if the forum gave people's details out 'willy nilly' it would be slightly more serious

Quote from: Madebymonkeys on January 02, 2013, 04:09:14 AM
I think you have libelled each other a number of times if you both wanted to keep score!
I suspect that if the forum gave people's details out 'willy nilly' it would be slightly more serious

I realize that there was much Bruce_TPU, lumen and Philip noise there for a bit but have you decided if what Philip describes is a maxwell's demon device?  If it is, then there are proofs about what can and can not be built.   The only point of contention that Philip has mentioned so far is that he doesn't appear to believe that there's a entropic cost to writing/erasing data (even though there is in just about every existing computer system).  Do you follow me so far?

Also here's another question for everyone.  So a bunch of you seem to think that Philip is right.   Putting that aside for the moment, I also detect that if Philip is right you will think all the skeptics *should* have believed him.  I'd like to know if that's true, at what point you think it's true and why?

Quote from: sarkeizen on January 02, 2013, 09:18:58 AM
I realize that there was much Bruce_TPU, lumen and Philip noise there for a bit but have you decided if what Philip describes is a maxwell's demon device?  If it is, then there are proofs about what can and can not be built.   The only point of contention that Philip has mentioned so far is that he doesn't appear to believe that there's a entropic cost to writing/erasing data (even though there is in just about every existing computer system).  Do you follow me so far?

Also here's another question for everyone.  So a bunch of you seem to think that Philip is right.   Putting that aside for the moment, I also detect that if Philip is right you will think all the skeptics *should* have believed him.  I'd like to know if that's true, at what point you think it's true and why?

Lots of noise!
I kind of follow so far but I don't think I have the knowledge to say yay or nay TBH.
- from what I have read online (not taught) you certainly seem to agree with most smart minds out there - most people agree that in systems like this, people forget to throw entropy into the mix. When its thrown in, things fall apart and life savings are gone!
Mbm

Quote from: Madebymonkeys on January 02, 2013, 10:03:03 AM
people forget to throw entropy into the mix. When its thrown in, things fall apart and life savings are gone!

Fair enough.  So my next step was to give Philip the benefit of the doubt.  So assume that perhaps there is some way to "decide" without memory or without erasing memory.  From there you might want to look at some of the work in information theory that correlates physical entropy with informational entropy - it's exceptionally interesting in and of itself - one of the theorems demonstrates that there is a correlation between stored information and energy (or entropy).  That a "bit" of information is "worth" a certain amount of energy.

You don't need to understand it all but just the (somewhat oversimplified) idea that any Maxwell's Demon machine is essentially a small computing device.  It takes an input, there's a decision and there's an action (to sort or not to sort) in Szilard, Brillouin and Landauer's models they also have "memory" but Philip's doesn't (or at least doesn't in the way an IT person would recognize it) and I'm getting to the problem with that.   If you follow me so far, let me know and I'll give you the next piece.

Anyone like Bruce_TPU (or Philip who's pretty tight lipped about information theory - which makes me think it's a few light years outside his field) who thinks I'm saying "nothing" - might want to come forward at this point and explain what I'm getting at here and why it's false because you can't really make your statement with confidence unless you know that.   If you can't then it makes me think you're all blowing smoke.