3 ms·
Slightly OT, but I just saw this last night and thought it was hilarious: You should call it "entropy", for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty fu
by ScottBurson 7y ago
Slightly OT, but I just saw this last night and thought it was hilarious:
You should call it "entropy", for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage. — John von Neumann, suggesting to Claude Shannon a name for his new uncertainty function, as quoted in Scientific American Vol. 225 No. 3, (1971), p. 180.
- hcs 7y agoSchrödinger used the term "negentropy". And there's a story that Norbert Wiener used to wander around MIT telling anyone who would listen that information is negative entropy, including Shannon. (I'm having trouble finding it, will edit if I track it down) Edit: ah, it was Fano who told that story (quoted in "The Cybernetics Moment"): > Electrical engineer Robert Fano at MIT, recalled that sometime in 1947, Wiener "walked into my office ... announced 'information is entropy' and then walks out again. No explanation, no elaboration." More about Wiener's approach and another recounting of the story here: http://news.mit.edu/2011/timeline-wiener-0119 http://news.mit.edu/2011/timeline-wiener-0119
- kgwgk 7y agoThe article in question: Energy and Information http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/conteudo_thumb/mini/Energy-and-Information.pdf http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/conteudo_thumb/mini/Energ... Another paper co-authored by Myron Tribus: Information Theory and Thermodynamics https://www.e-periodica.ch/cntmng?pid=hpa-001:1974:47::871 https://www.e-periodica.ch/cntmng?pid=hpa-001:1974:47::871