4 ms·
The suggestion to use the word entropy by von Neumann is a great story: My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the
by notlukesky 4y ago
The suggestion to use the word entropy by von Neumann is a great story:
My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, '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.'
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/403036/john-von-neumanns-remark-on-entropy https://mathoverflow.net/questions/403036/john-von-neumanns-...
- mitthrowaway2 4y agoIt's a funny story, but now that we do understand better what entropy is it's clear that information and thermodynamic entropy are the same concept, so it was a very good call.
- User23 4y agoVon Neumann was incredibly clever.
- bee_rider 4y agovon Neumann was an alien sent to Earth when we were about to get/were in the process of getting nukes, to make sure we advanced fast enough to not blow ourselves up. And the wild thing is that you, the reader, are only like 75% sure I’m kidding and don’t actually believe this.
- mitthrowaway2 4y agoYes, it's likely he also understood that they were the same concept, and his recommendation was less of a joke than his words suggest.