Oracular information and the second law of thermodynamics

Patterns and processes - spatial and temporal correlations - are subject to thermodynamic laws, functioning as sources of work known as information reservoirs. Devices that generate or consume a pattern one piece at a time require internal memory to accurately enact this transformation, and this memory is also subject to thermodynamic laws. Oracular information is correlation between such memory and upcoming portions of a process that is not explained by the process's history. Here, I provide an explicit construction for a finite-extent generator of any stationary pattern with arbitrarily low thermal dissipation, at the cost of increasing the oracular information in the generator's memory. I then conversely show that if oracular information could be incorporated within any device that anticipates and consumes a pattern to release work, this would be inconsistent with the second law of thermodynamics. This suggests that oracular information is only physical when used by machines that are the cause of patterns.

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