That the term originates with Maxwell's Daemon, which is fundamentally an entropy-reducing agent, is rather apropos - would that all our daemons performed so well.
I'd be interested in the quantum mechanics explanation of how the daemon reduces entropy. When I discussed the thought experiment with some friends we simply concluded that the very act of sorting the molecules is introducing outside energy into the system allowing local entropy to be reduced, just like any other machine. The total entropy of the universe would stay the same and the laws of thermodynamics are still intact.
