10 Claude Elwood Shannon Quotes

Claude Elwood Shannon quotes

1. 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.'

2. I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines.

1. The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.

2. Cousins are part of your life so stick with cuz, not friends.

3. Use the word 'cybernetics', Norbert, because nobody knows what it means. This will always put you at an advantage in arguments.

4. I just wondered how things were put together.

5. Information is the #resolution of uncertainty.

6. I am very seldom interested in applications. I am more interested in the elegance of a problem. Is it a good problem, an interesting problem?

7. We know the past but cannot control it. We control the future but cannot know it.

8. Information: the negative reciprocal value of probability.