Related papers: Thermodynamically rational decision making under u…
A demonic being, introduced by Maxwell, to miraculously create thermal non-equilibrium and violate the Second law of thermodynamics, has been among the most intriguing and elusive wishful concepts for over 150 years. Maxwell and his…
To induce transport, detailed balance must be broken. A common mechanism is to bias the dynamics with a thermodynamic fuel, such as chemical energy. An intriguing, alternative strategy is for a Maxwell demon to effect the bias using…
Maxwell demons are creatures that are imagined to be able to reduce the entropy of a system without performing any work on it. Conventionally, such a Maxwell demon's intricate action consists of measuring individual particles and…
Experience collected in mesoscopic dynamic modeling of externally driven systems indicates absence of potentials that could play role of equilibrium or nonequilibrium thermodynamic potentials yet their thermo-dynamics-like modeling is often…
We describe a minimal model of an autonomous Maxwell demon, a device that delivers work by rectifying thermal fluctuations while simultaneously writing information to a memory register. We solve exactly for the steady-state behavior of our…
Recent advances in experimental techniques allow one to measure and control systems at the level of single molecules and atoms. Here gaining information about fluctuating thermodynamic quantities is crucial for understanding nonequilibrium…
Maxwellian ratchets are autonomous, finite-state thermodynamic engines that implement input-output informational transformations. Previous studies of these "demons" focused on how they exploit environmental resources to generate work: They…
Motivated by recent progress on the motive power of information in quantum thermodynamics, we put forth an operational resource theory of Maxwell's demons. We show that the resourceful ({\em daemonic}) states can be partitioned into at most…
The second law of thermodynamics dictates the fundamental limits to the amount of energy and information that can be exchanged between physical systems. In this work, we extend a thermodynamic formalism describing this flow of energy and…
Controversy about the significance of underdetermination of theories persists in the philosophy and conduct of science. The issue has practical import when research is used to inform decision making, because scientific uncertainty yields…
In the past decade several theoretical Maxwell's demon models have been proposed exhibiting effects such as refrigerating, doing work at the cost of information, and some experiments have been done to realise these effects. Here we propose…
Using classical thermodynamics, we argue that Maxwell's demon loses its battle against Clausius as any temperature difference or other thermodynamic forces it creates is immediately compensated by spontaneous counterbalancing flows that…
Our hypothesis is that by equipping certain agents in a multi-agent system controlling an intelligent building with automated decision support, two important factors will be increased. The first is energy saving in the building. The second…
We consider decision problems under uncertainty where the options available to a decision maker and the resulting outcome are related through a causal mechanism which is unknown to the decision maker. We ask how a decision maker can learn…
The ability to reason under uncertainty and with incomplete information is a fundamental requirement of decision support technology. In this paper we argue that the concentration on theoretical techniques for the evaluation and selection of…
Maxwell's demon elucidates the value of information in thermodynamics, using measurement and feedback: he evolves an equilibrated gas into a nonequilibrium state, from which one might extract work. The demon can evolve the system farther…
Information thermodynamics provides a framework for studying the effect of feedback loops on entropy production. It has enabled the understanding of novel thermodynamic systems such as the information engine which can be seen as a modern…
The study of intelligent systems explains behaviour in terms of economic rationality. This results in an optimization principle involving a function or utility, which states that the system will evolve until the configuration of maximum…
In this paper we propose to use elements of the mathematical formalism of Quantum Mechanics to capture the idea that agents' preferences, in addition to being typically uncertain, can also be indeterminate. They are determined (i.e.,…
As early as 1867, two years after the introduction of the concept of entropy by Clausius, Maxwell showed that the limitations imposed by the second law of thermodynamics depend on the information that one possesses about the state of a…