Can Demons Work Miracles

Combining Angels, Demons and Miracles in Program Speciications

A Maximum Work Theorem for Maxwell's Demons

Henrik Sandberg, Jean-Charles Delvenne, Nigel J. Newton, and Sanjoy K. Mitter Automatic Control Lab, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden ICTEAM and CORE, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, UK Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, MIT, Cambridge, Massachuse...

Maximum work extraction and implementation costs for nonequilibrium Maxwell's demons.

We determine the maximum amount of work extractable in finite time by a demon performing continuous measurements on a quadratic Hamiltonian system subjected to thermal fluctuations, in terms of the information extracted from the system. The maximum work demon is found to apply a high-gain continuous feedback involving a Kalman-Bucy estimate of the system state and operates in nonequilibrium. A ...

Neoclassical Miracles

We study the dynamic behavior of a Neoclassical growth model with finite lifetimes and imperfect altruism in which individuals can accumulate both physical and human capital. We use the model to better understand and explain the behavior of economic miracles. Our results suggest that standard Neoclassical forces can account for the performance of the miracle economies and can explain the protra...

Proof of Work can Work

and Overview Proof of work has been proposed as a mechanism to increase the cost of email so that spamming is no longer economically attractive. However, the first economic examination of proof of work argued that POW would not, in fact, work because of the difference of cost to spammers and senders of legitimate email. We illustrate that this shift in the production frontier enabled by zombies...