In this case I feel more inclined to bite the bullet. After all, Solomonoff-as-it-is is an application of the basic requirement of probability: “use all your available information, and nothing else”.
When the totality of all we know doesn’t constrain on a finite universe, then Occam emerges as a trivial fact about allowing infinite explanations.
But if the totality of what we know does indeed produce a finite model, and induction works from any prior, then I say that the razor simply doesn’t apply.
After all, I prefer to derive my epistemology from what works than the other way around.
Sure, if that’s the way you like it, but for me that just doesn’t work. Occam’s Razor is a principle that is supposed to help me think better here and now; to decide that its justification rests on whether, say, the Universe is discrete at Planck scale or not, when this choice has to be compatible with QM and Newtonian mechanics at larger scales and therefore doesn’t change anything in practical terms in my life here and now—that seems absurd. To me, it’s a clear evidence that this is no justification at all.
In this case I feel more inclined to bite the bullet. After all, Solomonoff-as-it-is is an application of the basic requirement of probability: “use all your available information, and nothing else”.
When the totality of all we know doesn’t constrain on a finite universe, then Occam emerges as a trivial fact about allowing infinite explanations.
But if the totality of what we know does indeed produce a finite model, and induction works from any prior, then I say that the razor simply doesn’t apply.
After all, I prefer to derive my epistemology from what works than the other way around.
Sure, if that’s the way you like it, but for me that just doesn’t work. Occam’s Razor is a principle that is supposed to help me think better here and now; to decide that its justification rests on whether, say, the Universe is discrete at Planck scale or not, when this choice has to be compatible with QM and Newtonian mechanics at larger scales and therefore doesn’t change anything in practical terms in my life here and now—that seems absurd. To me, it’s a clear evidence that this is no justification at all.
Ah, the joy of mass downvoting… Sigh.