[kgwgk]

I'm surprised to hear that "the entropy of the system was always 0 bits."

Let's say that the urn contains a ball that changes its color from black to white and viceversa every thousand years (relative to January 1, 1970 midnight UTC).

Given that "macrostate" there are two possible and equally probable "microstates". The entropy is positive. If I look into the urn and find that the ball is white was the entropy of the system always zero? Or is it always positive in this example?

[deltaonefour]

Positive always based on the choice of our macrostate.

[kgwgk]

Ok, that’s at least more coherent with the others things that you wrote.

[deltaonefour]

Don't appreciate that comment at all. Rude.

What I'm seeing in your other reply is actually you not even reading my reply. Your making statements on things I already touched upon.

It makes you seem not intelligent. But that would be a rude thing to say would it? There's no point. If you want to have a discussion probably smart to say things that will keep the other person engaged rather then pissed off.

This is actually bad enough where I demand an apology. Say your sorry, genuinely, or this thread won't continue and you're just admitting your mean.

[kgwgk]

I'm sorry, I really didn't intend any offense.

I really mean what I wrote: that answer is consistent with other things that you wrote indicating that you view the macrostate as a theoretical collection of microstates which is defined under some assumptions which may be dettached from what is known about the state of the system.

So you think that it's still somehow meaningful to refer to the macrostate "the ball may be black or white" and the associated entropy even if the color of the ball is known.

The coherence is in discarding the knowledge of the microstate / the future outcomes of the die / the color of the ball and claiming the original models are still valid (which they may be for some purposes - when that additional knowledge is irrelevant - but not for others).

If you had said "the macrostate I originally chose becomes meaningless because I know the microstate and the entropy is zero now [or was zero all along, as in your previous comment]" it would have been less coherent with the rest of your discourse - and it would have merited a longer reply.

[deltaonefour]

>So you think that it's still somehow meaningful to refer to the macrostate "the ball may be black or white" and the associated entropy even if the color of the ball is known.

Yes. A probability distribution can still be derived from a series of events EVEN when the outcome of those exact events are known prior to the actual occurrence.

I believe this is the frequentist view point as opposed to the bayesian viewpoint.

The argument comes down to this as entropy is really just a derivation from probability and the law of large numbers.

[kgwgk]

I would say that - in this particular example - knowing that the ball is white and will remain white for the next 950 years and will then be black for the next 1000 years, etc. makes the macrostate "the ball may be black or white" irrelevant.

However, I agree that one can still define the macrostate as if the color was unkown - and make calculations from it. (It's just that I don't see the point - it doesn't seem a good or useful description of the system.)