cousin_it comments on A note on the description complexity of physical theories - Less Wrong

19 Post author: cousin_it 09 November 2010 04:25PM

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Comment author: Perplexed 11 November 2010 02:17:54AM *  1 point [-]

Not sure what your objection is here.

I'm not sure I have one. It is just a little puzzling how we might reconcile two things:

  • EY's very attractive intuition that of two theories making the same predictions, one is true and the other ... what? False? Wrong? Well, ... "not quite so true".
  • The tradition in Bayesianism and standard rationality (and logical positivism, for that matter) that the truth of a statement is to be found through its observable consequences.

ETA: Bayes's rule only deals with the fraction of reality-space spanned by a sentence, never with the number of characters needed to express the sentence.

Comment author: cousin_it 11 November 2010 02:40:31AM *  0 points [-]

Thanks, your comment is a very clear formulation of the reason why I wrote the post. Probably even better than the post itself.

I'm halfway tempted to write yet another post about complexity (maybe in the discussion area), summarizing all the different positions expressed here in the comments and bringing out the key questions. The last 24 hours have been a very educational experience for me. Or maybe let someone else do it, because I don't want to spam LW.

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