Conversation between Claude Shannon and John von Neumann on the naming of Entropy.
Shannon: What to call it...that is my greatest concern.
Von Neuman: Well, the name is key.
Shannon: I thought of calling it ‘Information’...but that is overused.
What about ‘Uncertainty’?
Von Neuman: No, no, no. You should call it ‘Entropy’
Shannon: Why should I call it Entropy?
Von Neuman: For two reasons, in the first place your ‘uncertainty’
has been used in statistical mechanics. In the second place
and more importantly, nobody knows what Entropy really is.
So in any future debate you will have the advantage.
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