This ties in well with the intelligence-as-compression paradigm: much of mathematics can be interpreted as a collection of very short programs, and so in a predictable universe with a bias towards short programs, it’s unsurprising if a lot of them turn out to be useful somewhere or other.
Those “very short programs” are useful even if the universe has no bias towards them. It’s just Occam’s razor. I think it has more to do with the process of knowledge gathering than with the universe itself.
Those “very short programs” are useful even if the universe has no bias towards them.
They are? How? If they have no privileged status and phenomena are due to long programs as likely as short programs (leaving aside the issue of how they works given that there are so many more long programs than short ones), then they don’t predict well. That doesn’t sound useful.
It’s just Occam’s razor.
And what justifies Occam’s razor if the universe has no bias towards short programs?
This ties in well with the intelligence-as-compression paradigm: much of mathematics can be interpreted as a collection of very short programs, and so in a predictable universe with a bias towards short programs, it’s unsurprising if a lot of them turn out to be useful somewhere or other.
Those “very short programs” are useful even if the universe has no bias towards them. It’s just Occam’s razor. I think it has more to do with the process of knowledge gathering than with the universe itself.
They are? How? If they have no privileged status and phenomena are due to long programs as likely as short programs (leaving aside the issue of how they works given that there are so many more long programs than short ones), then they don’t predict well. That doesn’t sound useful.
And what justifies Occam’s razor if the universe has no bias towards short programs?