Comment on A note on the description complexity of physical theories

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:53:22 GMT

...if the length of the prefix is non-negligible compared to the length of the program, then we can get misleading results.

For the purposes of complexity comparisons the prefix should be held constant across the algorithms. You should always be comparing algorithms in the same language.

However, I don't agree that there is a principled way of choosing the right representation.

You are correct. I only use phrases such as "the essential entities and relationships of the domain" to outline the nature of the problem.

The problem with comparing the complexity of QM interpretations is that our representation of those interpretations is arbitrary. We can only guess at the proper representation of QM. By choosing different representations we could favor one theory or the other as the most simple.

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