Let’s say that you are trying to model the data 3,1,4,1,5,9
The hypothesis “The data is 3,1,4,1,5,9” would be hard-coding the answer. It is better than the hypothesis “a witch wrote down the data, which was 3,1,4,1,5,9″. (This example is just ruled out by Occam’s razor, but more generally we want our explanations to be less data than the data itself, lest it just sneak in a clever encoding of the data.)
Thanks, that makes sense! And to be clear, would an ‘explanation’ be a program which could generate the data 3,1,4,1,5,9? And a good explanation would be one which took up fewer bits of information than just the list 3,1,4,1,5,9?
Yes! In fact, ideally it would be computer programs; the game is based on Solomonoff induction, which is algorithms in a fixed programming language. In this post I’m exploring the idea of using informal human language instead of programming languages, but explanations should be thought of as informal programs.
Let’s say that you are trying to model the data 3,1,4,1,5,9
The hypothesis “The data is 3,1,4,1,5,9” would be hard-coding the answer. It is better than the hypothesis “a witch wrote down the data, which was 3,1,4,1,5,9″. (This example is just ruled out by Occam’s razor, but more generally we want our explanations to be less data than the data itself, lest it just sneak in a clever encoding of the data.)
Thanks, that makes sense! And to be clear, would an ‘explanation’ be a program which could generate the data 3,1,4,1,5,9? And a good explanation would be one which took up fewer bits of information than just the list 3,1,4,1,5,9?
Yes! In fact, ideally it would be computer programs; the game is based on Solomonoff induction, which is algorithms in a fixed programming language. In this post I’m exploring the idea of using informal human language instead of programming languages, but explanations should be thought of as informal programs.
I see, thanks for taking the time to explain!