“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.
Context: 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.

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John Von Neumann19

Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath 1903–1957

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