Comment by UniverseHacker

The laws of thermodynamics are empirical: all of our physics experiments and observations thus far support and agree with them. We have no external confirmation, e.g. "god's source code for the universe" or some such that proves them to be absolute laws, but given that they hold up consistently across a huge number of observations, in a huge number of domains- we are nearly certain that they are absolute. Gravity itself (e.g. general relativity) is also on the same footing- like thermodynamics it has proven itself to reliably predict observations across a huge number of different new experiments.

This reasoning isn't convincing enough for some (non-physicist) people- there are whole forums of people working on perpetual motion machine designs, etc. that think thermodynamics is nonsense. However, thus far none of their machines have ever worked.

Although I am not a working physicist, I was trained as a physicist (a long time ago!), and assign a prior of essentially 100% to the laws of thermodynamics, from a huge amount of evidence. E.g. I am certain that either I am misunderstanding this paper, or it is simply wrong. I'm hoping someone whose physics isn't as rusty as mine will step in and explain what I am missing here.