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Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

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236 points wizerno | 1 comments | 20 Oct 24 00:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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JD557 ◴[20 Oct 24 08:35 UTC] No.41893914[source]▶
Unrelated to the word "daemon", but related to the article, I was a bit surprised by this assertion:

> Eventually, though, the theory of quantum mechanics showed why it wouldn't work.

I was familiar with the information theory arguments (the same presented in Wikipedia[1]). Is that why they mean here by "quantum mechanics" or is there another counterargument to Maxwell's daemon?

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon#Criticism_an...

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n4r9 ◴[20 Oct 24 09:40 UTC] No.41894230[source]▶
I'm guessing that the daemon's ability to allow only fast molecules through the gate depends on knowing their position and velocity simultaneously?
replies(3): >>41895498 #>>41897821 #>>41899307 #
1. roywiggins ◴[20 Oct 24 19:23 UTC] No.41897821[source]▶
It seems to come from measuring the particles at all. One result is that the demon has to store information about the particles, and erasing that information to free up memory increases the entropy of the gas/demon system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon#Criticism_...