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buybuydandavis comments on Open thread, Jan. 19 - Jan. 25, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gondolinian 19 January 2015 12:04AM

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Comment author: passive_fist 19 January 2015 03:15:45AM 3 points [-]

I've been thinking about (and writing out my thoughts on) the real meaning of entropy in physics and how it relates to physical models. It should be obvious that entropy(physical system) isn't well-defined; only entropy(physical model, physical system) is defined. Here, 'physical model' might refer to something like the kinetic theory of gases, and 'physical system' would refer to, say, some volume of gas or a cup of tea. It's interesting to think about entropy from this perspective because it becomes related to the subjectivist interpretation of probability. I want to know if anyone knows of any links to similar ideas and thoughts.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 19 January 2015 04:04:10AM 1 point [-]

It's interesting to think about entropy from this perspective because it becomes related to the subjectivist interpretation of probability.

If you haven't already read Jaynes derivation of maxent, and the further derivation of much of statistical mechanics from those principles, that would be a good place to start.