Shannon's 1971 recollection: von Neumann suggested 'entropy' because 'no one really knows what entropy really is'
eigenron · x · 2026-10-15
A classic quote resurfaced from Claude Shannon's September 1971 Scientific American interview: he considered calling his uncertainty function 'information' but found the word overused, settling on 'uncertainty' until John von Neumann suggested 'entropy' — first because statistical mechanics already used the term, and second, because 'no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'
The anecdote explains the naming of a concept that underpins cross-entropy loss in modern machine learning.
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