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> I thought the 2nd law of thermodynamics was saying that with incomplete knowledge, the probability distribution of possible states becomes more and more spread out as time goes on. It's almost a limit to how you can make predictions or simulations of physics when the initial state of the system is not fully known. Equivalently, it's a banal statement about chaos in the sense of chaos theory.

I'm not sure I understand what do you mean by "as time goes on". Classical thermodynamical entropy is defined for a system in equilibrium and it doesn't change with time. It changes when you do things to the system.



I don't think statistical mechanics entropy is limited in this way. I think the (incorrect? oversimplified?) definition given in the article is only valid under the conditions you've given. But I'm not sure.


Then it maybe depends on what you meant by "the 2nd law of thermodynamics".




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