It sounds like you are bringing up the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_paradox. There is an excellent paper by

It sounds like you are bringing up the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_paradox. There is an excellent paper by Jaynes on this: https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/gibbs.paradox.pdf https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/gibbs.paradox.pdf The point of the Gibbs paradox is that exchanging two different shoes of the same color is not a new microstate, if all black shoes are considered identical. When they should be considered identical and when they shouldn't be is a bit more complicated, and the Jaynes paper goes into that.