Re:Entropy as Disorder: History of a Misconception
by hcs on Saturday September 21, 2019 @03:51PM
(#21037506)
The author's point is that "chaos" and "disorder" aren't well defined, usually.
The entropy content of a situation can't be computed without knowing the physics that would have gotten it there, just as I can't compute the entropy of a message (my surprise at receiving it, or the number of bits needed to transmit it) consisting of a single symbol without some knowledge of the distribution it was drawn from (the expectations of myself, or the receiver). (If it is part of a longer message I can use that message itself as a model, but that is only a first approximation.)
The entropy content of a situation can't be computed without knowing the physics that would have gotten it there, just as I can't compute the entropy of a message (my surprise at receiving it, or the number of bits needed to transmit it) consisting of a single symbol without some knowledge of the distribution it was drawn from (the expectations of myself, or the receiver). (If it is part of a longer message I can use that message itself as a model, but that is only a first approximation.)