Towards operational interpretations of generalized entropies

The driving force behind our study has been to overcome the difficulties you encounter when you try to extend the clear and convincing operational interpretations of classical Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy to other notions, especially to generalized entropies as proposed by Tsallis. Our approach is philosophical, based on speculations regarding the interplay between truth, belief and knowledge. The main result demonstrates that, accepting philosophically motivated assumptions, the only possible measures of entropy are those suggested by Tsallis – which, as we know, include classical entropy. This result constitutes, so it seems, a more transparent interpretation of entropy than previously available. However, further research to clarify the assumptions is still needed. Our study points to the thesis that one should never consider the notion of entropy in isolation – in order to enable a rich and technically smooth study, further concepts, such as divergence, score functions and descriptors or controls should be included in the discussion. This will clarify the distinction between Nature and Observer and facilitate a game theoretical discussion. The usefulness of this distinction and the subsequent exploitation of game theoretical results – such as those connected with the notion of Nash equilibrium – is demonstrated by a discussion of the Maximum Entropy Principle.