ALT A schematic showing how, in thermodynamic processes that reduce the observation probability to zero, depicted on the far left as a simple bar graph with probability on the y axis and state on the x axis with the bars gradually decreasing in size, there is a trade-off between time, cost, and error. The example on the top left is bit erasure, where the probability of all microstates corresponding to the logical state ‘1’ is reduced to zero. To its right is an illustration of cooling toward the ground state, where the probability of excited states is reduced to zero. Below and to the left is copying, where the probability of states differing between the source and target is reduced to zero. To its right is kinetic proofreading, where the probability of pathways producing incorrect products is reduced to zero.