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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

Kurzweil believes that being very very small allows you to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics. There's no physics to back this up...

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Sure there is. The second law of thermodynamics (which I am assuming you are referring to) only applies to an isolated system and describes its tendency toward thermal equilibrium -- it doesn't apply when you are able to add energy to the system.

Am I misunderstanding you?

Simply that nanotech can accomplish miracles. You have to power your nanobots somehow, and you have to dump the heat they create by doing work.

If you harvest solar energy you can do a whole lot of work without worrying about any new heat.

Harvesting a tiny fraction of the total solar energy available (on Earth) would look an awful lot like a miracle.

He's not talking about climate change; he's talking about heat sinks so your nanobots don't literally vibrate themselves apart before doing anything useful.

So why is that a big deal? There are trillions of nano-machines being powered and dumping their waste heat in you right now. Or rather, they are you.

Sure, and when they work hard, it can kill you (that's what a fever is). So how can you do healing better than the body can? Where does the power come from, and where does the heat go?

You're then both saying the same thing. S has to go up somewhere.

Open systems still obey thermodynamics, it's just that there's an energy flux (and an entropy gradient).

Look up Ilya Prigogine, self-organizing systems, and dissipative systems.

Humans and their societies (and other artifacts) are one such.

What do you mean? I can't find anything about that and Kurzweil on google.

Got a specific pointer / reference on this?

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