Eugine_Nier comments on What would you do with a solution to 3-SAT? - Less Wrong

3 Post author: alexflint 27 April 2011 06:19PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 28 April 2011 04:13:10AM 2 points [-]

And essentially all mathematical theorems would be proved in the same way.

I wasn't talking about mathematical theorems but about

stock market data, or the human genome, or the complete works of Shakespeare.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 April 2011 04:39:51AM 10 points [-]

That is a bit poetic. In the Fibonacci case, we know that there is a simple explanation/formula. For the stock market, genome, or Shakespeare, it is not obvious that the smallest circuit will provide any significant understanding. On the other hand, if there's any regularity at all in the stock market, the shortest efficient description will take advantage of this regularity for compression. And, therefore, you could use this automatically discovered regularity for prediction as well.

On the other hand, if several traders get their hands on efficient NP computers at once, it's safe to bet that historical regularities will go out the window.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 28 April 2011 09:47:08PM 0 points [-]

it's safe to bet that historical regularities will go out the window.

Pun intended?