you should keep track of click-throughs on this sort of post and use the data to select epigraphs for your book

Suppose you have a system X that's equally likely to be in any of 8 possible states [...] on average, we'll have to ask 3 yes-or-no questions to find out X's value.

Eliezer: is there a formal connection between entropy and binary search? A binary search of that system would also terminate in three operations, right?