Cognitive Scaffold

Preparing your thinking workspace

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MENTAL MODEL · M6211

Landauer's Principle

Landauer's Principle
StructureHigh supportLogic
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Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-30

CORE DEFINITION

Erasing information necessarily entails energy consumption. Logically irreversible computational operations (such as deleting a bit) inevitably lead to an increase in thermodynamic entropy. This establishes a physical equivalence between information and energy.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

The physical cost of forgetting. We often think that 'forgetting' happens naturally, but in fact, 'completely erasing' a memory or data requires a huge amount of energy. This is why painful memories are hard to eliminate—because your brain needs to do work to counteract entropy.

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Anchor fast decisions

Erasing 1 bit of information physically dissipates at least kT·ln2 of heat energy, indicating a hard constraint between information, entropy, and energy—computation is not free.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principleZH · Explicit
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