I’m asking if there is a name and a specific theory of these things. I strongly disagree that just studying thermodynamics or statistical mechanics answers these questions, at least directly—though sure, if there is a theory of it, those are the tools you need to derive it. There are obvious thermodynamic limits of course, but they are usually ridiculously permissive. I’m asking if there’s a theory that tries to study things at a lower level of generality, is all, and sets more narrow bounds than just “any nanomachine could not go above Carnot efficiency” or “any nanomachine would be subject to Brownian motion” or such.
By having a MD in Engineering and a Physics PhD, following the same exact courses you recommend as potentially containing the answer and in fact finding no direct answer to these specific questions in them.
You could argue “the answer can be derived from that knowledge” and sure, if it exists it probably can, but that’s why I’m asking. Lots of theories can be derived from other knowledge. Most of machine learning can be derived from a basic knowledge of Bayes’ theorem and multivariate calculus, but that doesn’t make any math undergrad a ML expert. I was asking so that I could read any previous work on the topic. I might actually spend some more time thinking about approaches myself later, but wouldn’t do it without first knowing if I’m just reinventing the wheel, so I was probing for answers. I don’t think this is particularly weird or controversial.
I’m asking if there is a name and a specific theory of these things. I strongly disagree that just studying thermodynamics or statistical mechanics answers these questions, at least directly—though sure, if there is a theory of it, those are the tools you need to derive it. There are obvious thermodynamic limits of course, but they are usually ridiculously permissive. I’m asking if there’s a theory that tries to study things at a lower level of generality, is all, and sets more narrow bounds than just “any nanomachine could not go above Carnot efficiency” or “any nanomachine would be subject to Brownian motion” or such.
Why do you believe there is one?
I don’t? I wondered if there might be one, and asked if anyone else knew any better.
Then on what basis do you “strongly disagree that just studying thermodynamics or statistical mechanics answers these questions, at least directly”?
How did you attain the knowledge for this?
By having a MD in Engineering and a Physics PhD, following the same exact courses you recommend as potentially containing the answer and in fact finding no direct answer to these specific questions in them.
You could argue “the answer can be derived from that knowledge” and sure, if it exists it probably can, but that’s why I’m asking. Lots of theories can be derived from other knowledge. Most of machine learning can be derived from a basic knowledge of Bayes’ theorem and multivariate calculus, but that doesn’t make any math undergrad a ML expert. I was asking so that I could read any previous work on the topic. I might actually spend some more time thinking about approaches myself later, but wouldn’t do it without first knowing if I’m just reinventing the wheel, so I was probing for answers. I don’t think this is particularly weird or controversial.