Landauer's Principle

Any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of a bit or the merging of two computation paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding entropy increase in non-information bearing degrees of freedom of the information processing apparatus or its environment.

Attempts to show that the arrow of computation - and by analogy, the human psychological arrow - generally appeal to the above principle formulated by Rolf Landauer in a 1961 paper (see citation). This is implicit in the case of Stephen Hawking and explicit in Schulman's paper, cited in the parent node.

However in the attached OpposingArgument node, O.J.E. Maroney of the Perimeter Institute of Physics argues that the derivation of Landauer's Principle presumes an entropy increasing universe and that if a decreasing entropy universe is assumed, the principle reverses. Hence the attempt to bind the psychological and thermodynamic arrows using information theory fails.
RELATED ARTICLESExplain
The Arrow of Time 
The experience of time
Passage view components
Flow and direction of time?
Memory accretion hypothesis 
Direction is that of memory accretion
Why aligned with thermodynamic arrow?
Information theoretic explanation
Argument from computation
Computer memories need increasing entropy
Landauer's Principle
Information/entropy relationship
Landauer's principle reverses
Computers not bound to Landauer's Principle
Could be localized
Graph of this discussion
Enter the title of your article


Enter a short (max 500 characters) summation of your article
Enter the main body of your article
Lock
+Comments (0)
+Citations (2)
+About
Enter comment

Select article text to quote
welcome text

First name   Last name 

Email

Skip