Related papers: Anthropic Selection for a Low-Entropy Past
Even if a probability distribution is properly normalizable, its associated Shannon (or von Neumann) entropy can easily be infinite. We carefully analyze conditions under which this phenomenon can occur. Roughly speaking, this happens when…
Here we define and study the properties of retrodictive inference. We derive equations relating retrodiction entropy and thermodynamic entropy, and as a special case, show that under equilibrium conditions, the two are identical. We…
The extension of thermodynamic principles to active matter remains a challenge due to the non-equilibrium nature inherent to active systems. In this study, we introduce a framework to assess entropy in our minimal macroscopic experiment…
Choice overload occurs when individuals feel overwhelmed by an excessive number of options. Experimental evidence suggests that a larger selection can complicate the decision-making process. Consequently, choice satisfaction may diminish…
Many complex systems are characterized by non-Boltzmann distribution functions of their statistical variables. If one wants to -- justified or not -- hold on to the maximum entropy principle for complex statistical systems (non-Boltzmann)…
We discuss how, in a Universe restricted to the causal region connected to the observer, General Relativity implies the quantum nature of physical phenomena and directly leads to a string theory scenario, whose dynamics is ruled by a…
We review recent progress in understanding certain aspects of the thermodynamics of black holes and other horizons. Our discussion centers on various ``entropy bounds'' which have been proposed in the literature and on the current…
If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to…
The use of coarse graining to connect physical and information theoretic entropies has recently been given a precise formulation in terms of ``observational entropy'', describing entropy for observers with respect to a measurement. Here we…
The universe is certainly not yet in total thermodynamical equilibrium,so clearly some law telling about special initial conditions is needed. A universe or a system imposed to behave periodically gets thereby required ``initial…
Entropy is the measure of uncertainty in any data and is adopted for maximisation of mutual information in many remote sensing operations. The availability of wide entropy variations motivated us for an investigation over the suitability…
If the parameters defining the physics of our universe departed from their present values, the observed rich structure and complexity would not be supported. This article considers whether similar fine-tuning of parameters applies to…
Observational entropy -- a quantity that unifies Boltzmann's entropy, Gibbs' entropy, von Neumann's macroscopic entropy, and the diagonal entropy -- has recently been argued to play a key role in a modern formulation of statistical…
Prediction in quantum cosmology requires a specification of the universe's quantum dynamics and its quantum state. We expect only a few general features of the universe to be predicted with probabilities near unity conditioned on the…
Model or variable selection is usually achieved through ranking models according to the increasing order of preference. One of methods is applying Kullback-Leibler distance or relative entropy as a selection criterion. Yet that will raise…
As observers of the universe we are quantum physical systems within it. If the universe is very large in space and/or time, the probability becomes significant that the data on which we base predictions is replicated at other locations in…
In the absence of a fundamental theory that precisely predicts values for observable parameters, anthropic reasoning attempts to constrain probability distributions over those parameters in order to facilitate the extraction of testable…
Observational entropy provides a general notion of quantum entropy that appropriately interpolates between Boltzmann's and Gibbs' entropies, and has recently been argued to provide a useful measure of out-of-equilibrium thermodynamic…
In the global description of eternal inflation, probabilities for vacua are notoriously ambiguous. The local point of view is preferred by holography and naturally picks out a simple probability measure. It is insensitive to large expansion…
Our everyday descriptions of the universe are highly coarse-grained, following only a tiny fraction of the variables necessary for a perfectly fine-grained description. Coarse graining in classical physics is made natural by our limited…