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Incorrect comments on Ask an experimental physicist - Less Wrong
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We guessed and got really lucky?
In other words, magic. As I said, if you're allowed to use magic you can reduce the entropy as much as you like.
So is it impossible to guess and be lucky? Usually in this context the word "magic" would imply impossibility.
Well no, it's not impossible, but the chance of it happening is obviously 2^-N, where N is the number of bits required to specify the state. It follows that if you have 2^N states, you will get lucky and extract useful work once; which is, of course, the same amount of useful work you would get from 2^N states anyway, whether you'd made a guess or not. Even on the ignorance model of entropy, you cannot extract anything useful from randomness!