In another question, I talked about a form of magic that converts metabolic energy (i.e. the energy produced by biological processes in "animals", which for this purpose includes e.g. yeast) into kinetic energy, with essentially unbounded¹ ability to precisely direct that kinetic energy.
In one answer / comment, Yakk implied that this would give someone wielding this ability nearly unlimited power:
There is enough energy in a 1 kg rock to throw everything on the island of Manhattan 100 km into the sky.
On the one hand, I can see where someone might wonder if this could incarnate Maxwell's demon. On the other hand, looking at the thought experiment literally, it would seem that opening and closing the door would itself require work, never mind all the problems that conductive heat transfer raises.
Is this — not the literal thought experiment, but the general idea — plausible? If so, what would be an example of an actual process by which one could extract "unlimited" energy using this "kinetic magic", and what limits could be applied to the wielding of magic that would prevent it, without preventing less, ah, "excessive" uses of magic? (The linked question notes some of the things I want to be able to do.)
I will assume:
- Initiation energy is limited to, at best, 2KWHr, and can be delivered at, at best, 5KW. Any process which would require exceeding those limits to start isn't feasible.
- Magic can't simply convert matter directly to energy.
The critical piece of the puzzle here is that magic can reduce entropy. For instance, it can turn a jumbled pile of blocks into a neat stack, or turn a bag of black and white marbles into piles separated by colors. Perhaps more importantly, it can² do these sorts of things on a molecular level, for example, fill a 1L container with pure argon taken from the surrounding atmosphere.
A related question could be, how do you measure the energy value of information of this nature? Knowing that, it may be that the "obvious" limitation is that this energy cost must also be paid.
Affirmative ("yes, this is world-breaking") answers should give a detailed explanation why this is the case, not just an assertion that it is.
(¹ Not really, but for the purpose of this question, we'll go with that.)
(² Actually, this is, at best, pushing the limits of what I'm going to allow, but again, for the sake of this question, we'll go with it.)