What question did this study set out to answer?

To critically evaluate the integration of information and computation theories with thermodynamics and their implications for erasure processes.

May 24, 2026Open Access

Too Good to be True: Entropy, Information, Computation and the Uninformed Thermodynamics of Erasure

Key Points

To critically evaluate the integration of information and computation theories with thermodynamics and their implications for erasure processes.
Theoretical analysis of information-computation literature regarding thermodynamics.
Examination of Landauer’s principle and its implications for memory and thermalization.
Assessment of the role of thermodynamic fluctuations in this context.
Findings indicate that integrations often serve only as relabeling of traditional thermodynamics concepts.
Identified conflation of dynamic and static probabilities undermines the application of Landauer’s principle.
Noted significant neglect of thermodynamic fluctuations impacts the understanding of the thermodynamics of erasure.

Abstract

Abstract The notion that theories of information and computation can augment and even complete thermodynamics has proven too enticing for many to resist, even though careful analysis has long shown that the notion fails. In so far as the results of this information-computation theoretic literature succeed, they are merely tendentious relabeling of mundane thermodynamics. When they go beyond it, they fail. The difficulties include an unsustainable conflation by Landauer’s principle of the dynamic probabilities of thermalization with the static probabilities of memory devices. The most serious failure is an enduring neglect of the import of thermodynamic fluctuations.

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