  In this paper I apply newly-proposed information-theoretic principles to
thermodynamic work extraction. I show that if it is possible to extract work
deterministically from a physical system prepared in any one of a set of
states, then those states must be distinguishable from one another. This result
is formulated independently of scale and of particular dynamical laws; it also
provides a novel connection between thermodynamics and information theory,
established via the law of conservation of energy (rather than the second law
of thermodynamics). Albeit compatible with these conclusions, existing
thermodynamics approaches cannot provide a result of such generality, because
they are scale-dependent (relying on ensembles or coarse-graining) or tied to
particular dynamical laws. This paper thus provides a broader foundation for
thermodynamics, with implications for the theory of von Neumann's universal
constructor
