text: The Maximum Entropy thermodynamics has some important opposition, in part because of the relative paucity of published results from the MaxEnt school, especially with regard to new testable predictions far-from-equilibrium.
  The theory has also been criticized in the grounds of internal consistency. For instance, Radu Balescu provides a strong criticism of the MaxEnt School and of Jaynes work. Balescu states that Jaynes and coworkers theory is based on a non-transitive evolution law that produces ambiguous results. Although some difficulties of the theory can be cured, the theory "lacks a solid foundation" and "has not led to any new concrete result".
  Though the maximum entropy approach is based directly on informational entropy, it is applicable to physics only when there is a clear physical definition of entropy. There is no clear unique general physical definition of entropy for non-equilibrium systems, which are general physical systems considered during a process rather than thermodynamic systems in their own internal states of thermodynamic equilibrium. It follows that the maximum entropy approach will not be applicable to non-equilibrium systems until there is found a clear physical definition of entropy. This problem is related to the fact that heat may be transferred from a hotter to a colder physical system even when local thermodynamic equilibrium does not hold so that neither system has a well defined temperature. Classical entropy is defined for a system in its own internal state of thermodynamic equilibrium, which is defined by state variables, with no non-zero fluxes, so that flux variables do not appear as state variables. But for a strongly non-equilibrium system, during a process, the state variables must include non-zero flux variables. Classical physical definitions of entropy do not cover this case, especially when the fluxes are large enough to destroy local thermodynamic equilibrium. In other words, for entropy for non-equilibrium systems in general, the definition will need at least to involve specification of the process including non-zero fluxes, beyond the classical static thermodynamic state variables. The entropy that is maximized needs to be defined suitably for the problem at hand. If an inappropriate entropy is maximized, a wrong result is likely. In principle, maximum entropy thermodynamics does not refer narrowly and only to classical thermodynamic entropy. It is about informational entropy applied to physics, explicitly depending on the data used to formulate the problem at hand. According to Attard, for physical problems analyzed by strongly non-equilibrium thermodynamics, several physically distinct kinds of entropy need to be considered, including what he calls second entropy. Attard writes: "Maximizing the second entropy over the microstates in the given initial macrostate gives the most likely target macrostate.".  The physically defined second entropy can also be considered from an informational viewpoint.