timtyler comments on John Baez Interviews with Eliezer (Parts 2 and 3) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (34)
Does the worse than random essay help to explain?
Not at all. That essay simply says that non-deterministic algorithms don't perform better than deterministic ones (for some meanings of 'non-deterministic algorithms'). But the claim that needs to be explained is how determinism helps to prevent "making truly spectacular mistakes".
Right. No doubt he is thinking he doesn't want a cosmic ray hitting his friendly algorithm, and turning it into an unfriendly one. That means robustness - or error detection and correction. Determinism seems to be a reasonable approach to this which makes proving things about the results about as easy as possible.