Demon (thought experiment)

In thought experiments, philosophers and scientists occasionally imagine entities with special abilities as a way to pose thought experiment or highlight apparent paradoxes.

The word "demon" here does not necessarily connote a demon, a malevolent being. For instance, when William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) came up with the Maxwell's demon to highlight the implications of James Clerk Maxwell statistical interpretation of thermodynamics, he used the term in analogy to daemons in Greek mythology, supernatural beings as unseen forces of nature.

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