Every episode days early, ad-free, plus my essays: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe Get tidy today with a seven-day free trial of CleanMyMac! Use my coupon code THEORIES to get a special 20% off discount. Visit https://my.macpaw.com/trial/cleanmymac The thumbnail (currently) says “The Second Law is Wrong,” but we all understand that’s short for “The Second Law, as originally conceived, isn’t correct and has to be replaced by a probabilistically qualified version.” In this episode, we dive deep with philosopher of physics Wayne Myrvold to puncture entropy clichés and reframe thermodynamics as a resource theory. He argues the “entropy always increases” slogan is a consequence—not the law—and shows that Clausius’s entropy is defined only given the second law, while Gibbs vs. Boltzmann entropies answer different questions (“which entropy?”). We tour Maxwell’s demon, Landauer erasure, available energy/Helmholtz free energy, and why, once fluctuations matter, Carnot efficiency is only a statistical bound. Along the way: macrostates vs. microstates, why “disorder” misleads, ergodicity’s limited relevance, whether the universe is an isolated system, heat death as resource exhaustion, and how collapse theories would rewrite the story. We even touch QFT/stat-mech pedagogy and career advice. If you're curious about what entropy really is—and how information, agency, and objectives change the answer—this one’s for you. Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Links Mentioned: - Ted Jacobson [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3mhctWlXyV8 - Concerning Several Conveniently Applicable Forms For The Main Equations Of The Mechanical Heat Theory [Paper]: https://web.lemoyne.edu/giunta/Clausius1865.pdf - John Norton [TOE]: https://youtu.be/Tghl6aS5A3M - On An Absolute Thermometric Scale [Paper]: https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/2559_Therm_Stat_Mech/docs/Thomson_1848.pdf - Carnot Efficiency: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Carnot_efficiency - Maxwell’s Talk On Molecules: https://victorianweb.org/science/maxwell/molecules.html - Helmholtz Free Energy: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/helmholtz-free-energy - Boltzmann Entropy: https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Western_Washington_University/Biophysical_Chemistry_(Smirnov_and_McCarty)/01%3A_Biochemical_Thermodynamics/1.05%3A_The_Boltzmann_Distribution_and_the_Statistical_Definition_of_Entropy - Maxwell’s Letter: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PH-CAVENDISH-P-00092/1 - Landauer’s Principle: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S135521980300039X - On A Universal Tendency In Nature To The Dissipation Of Mechanical Energy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786445208647126 - Neil Turok [TOE]: https://youtu.be/zNZCa1pVE20 - Roger Penrose [TOE]: https://youtu.be/sGm505TFMbU - Sean Carroll [TOE]: https://youtu.be/9AoRxtYZrZo - Understanding The Infinite [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0674921178?tag=toe08-20 - Classical Electrodynamics [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1119770769?tag=toe08-20 - Why Information Is Entropy [YouTube]: https://youtu.be/8Uilw9t-syQ SUPPORT: - Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join - Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal - Crypto: https://nowpayments.io/donation/TOE - Support me on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4 SOCIALS: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs