We're talking about macroscopic systems here. The laws of thermodynamics depend on the law of large numbers (if you take the stat mech route), they can be considered laws about statistical averages. It doesn't matter that somebody in nanowhatever claims a deviation from the macroscopic behaviour, that's their job. You still have a macroscopic Earth. An Earth brimming with grey goo would still obey the laws of thermodynamics.
I referenced wikipedia and cited an example of such from my experience in physics lab in college nearly a decade ago… I don't get why people try to use some "law" built upon a particular set assumptions that work on a particular set of circumstances expect their leaky abstractions on top of it to govern everything that could ever be possible…
>The laws of thermodynamics depend on the law of large numbers (if you take the stat mech route), they can be considered laws about statistical averages.
On systems operating under certain assumptions… just like navier-stokes predicting singularities from a specific set of IC's in theory that don't happen in real life from said IC's, which have to be handled with a bunch of corrections and adjustments that are more accurate… we're still working out the math as to why that is…
Conservation of momentum is a physical law, that is, we're not making that up, we always see it. The Navier-Stokes equation is a continuum mechanics model of fluids with interesting mathematics, but it's not fundamental, it relies on conservation of momentum and additional reasonable assumptions about the fluid, in the same way that for instance the van der Waals equation is reasonable but it's not a law, you find deviations and there are better models.
As far as we can tell the laws of thermodynamics are laws indeed, that's why no one is proposing perpetual motion machines of the second kind any more.
