SilasBarta comments on Development of Compression Rate Method - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Daniel_Burfoot 20 May 2010 05:11PM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 20 May 2010 06:20:35PM *  4 points [-]

So, now we have a second uninformative article in your series, in which you're just stating the minimum message length (MML) formalism (as you note at the end), which most people here are already familiar with, and which we already accept as a superior epistemology to traditional science.

And you took a lot more words to say it than you needed to.

Now, if you were just out to present a new, more accessible introduction to MML, that would be great: stuff that helps people understand the foundation of rationality is welcome here. But you're claiming you have a new idea, and yet you've already blown over 5,000 words saying nothing new. Commenters asked you last time to get to the point.

Please do so.

Then we can explain to you that people like Marcus Hutter (who supports the compression benchmark and advised Matt Mahoney) are well aware of this epistemology, and yet still haven't produced a being with the intelligence of a three-year-old, despite having had computable algorithms that implement this for more than three years now. A little more insight is still needed, beyond MML-type induction.

ETA: You know what? Daniel_Burfoot is still getting net positive karma for both articles, despite not advancing any seemingly promising idea. I might as well post my rival research program and corresponding desired model in a top-level article. I probably won't have all the citations to drop, but I'm sure most here will find it more insightful and promising than fluffy, delaying articles like this one. And you'll see something new as well.

Comment author: CronoDAS 20 May 2010 09:02:18PM 3 points [-]

And you took a lot more words to say it than you needed to.

I thought it was pretty well-written. (And stating the "obvious" isn't always a bad thing.)

Comment author: SilasBarta 20 May 2010 11:21:34PM 1 point [-]

I thought it was pretty well-written.

Sure, if you're a fan of fluff and haven't been down the "Ultimate AI Idea" street too many times.

(And stating the "obvious" isn't always a bad thing.)

I agree, which is why I said:

Now, if you were just out to present a new, more accessible introduction to MML, that would be great: stuff that helps people understand the foundation of rationality is welcome here.

But that doesn't apply here because:

you're claiming you have a new idea, and yet you've already blown over 5,000 words saying nothing new. Commenters asked you last time to get to the point.

Comment author: timtyler 20 May 2010 08:07:17PM 1 point [-]

Occam's razor is part of the traditional scientific method - according to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

You can't really do much useful science without employing Occam's razor.

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 20 May 2010 11:00:03PM 0 points [-]

Sure, but traditional science's dependence on Occam is only implicit.

Comment author: timtyler 21 May 2010 07:46:15AM 0 points [-]

That Wikipedia article mentions it by name, though. It says:

"One of the elements of any scientific utility function is the refutability of the model. Another is its simplicity, on the Principle of Parsimony also known as Occam's Razor."

Comment author: zero_call 30 May 2010 08:08:44AM *  0 points [-]

This comment just seems really harsh to me... I understand what you're saying but surely the author doesn't have bad intentions here...