3 ms·
Shannon was a speaker at my commencement at CMU. He struck me as kind of a self-effacing, amusing sort of character. Maybe like a much quieter, less ego-driven
by Isamu 8y ago
Shannon was a speaker at my commencement at CMU. He struck me as kind of a self-effacing, amusing sort of character. Maybe like a much quieter, less ego-driven version of Feynman.
Also: as much as people talk about information theory in various contexts, I doubt that many take the trouble to understand it better. Like thermodynamics, people want to take away an overly broad, folksy interpretation and apply it everywhere without stopping to think if it really applies in the way they claim.
- shaklee3 8y agoI'm not sure what you mean here, so it may be worth elaborating. I think a lot of people understand how theory, and certainly in communication theory everyone understands the famous equation. I don't see anyone claiming it applies in places it doesn't.
- Isamu 8y agoShannon himself talked about it in "The Bandwagon": https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774 >I don't see anyone claiming it applies in places it doesn't. It applies in a lot of places, but probably in a more narrow way than people think. You can say "information theory applies here" and probably be right, but to be specific about what that means requires some work. Shannon says that himself in that piece. Thermodynamics is an easier one to see, because people always make claims about something "because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics", something about everything always becoming more disordered. But that's too simplistic a view, and fails to consider what is a closed system and so on.