Yes. The no free lunch theorems are powerful in theory, but almost pointless in practice. I was hoping that AIXI could evade them, even in theory, but it seems to not be the case.
There’s another real point—focusing on your prior as “fit” to the problem/universe.
The space of possible priors Wolpert considered were very unlike our experience—basically imposing no topological smoothness on points—every point is a ball from the urn of possible balls. That’s just not the way it is. Choosing your prior, and exploiting the properties of your prior then becomes the way to advance.
Yes. The no free lunch theorems are powerful in theory, but almost pointless in practice. I was hoping that AIXI could evade them, even in theory, but it seems to not be the case.
The point of the NFL theorems in practice is to keep you from getting your hopes up that you’ll get a free lunch.
So the point of no free lunch theorems is to tell you you won’t get a free lunch? ^_^
There’s another real point—focusing on your prior as “fit” to the problem/universe.
The space of possible priors Wolpert considered were very unlike our experience—basically imposing no topological smoothness on points—every point is a ball from the urn of possible balls. That’s just not the way it is. Choosing your prior, and exploiting the properties of your prior then becomes the way to advance.