[acdanger]

I struggle to understand entropy because it’s meaning seems to shift in subtle ways across disciplines (cryptography, thermodynamics, cs, etc) and I’m never quite sure if the which version I’m getting. Is there a basic definition of entropy that’s extended in different contexts?

[altarius]

> 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.' [1]

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_Elwood_Shannon#:~:text=...,'

[veganhouseDJ]

There are so many types of entropy. Why not understand it in your domain and then backtrack the more general definition?