printing-spoon comments on Pascal's Mugging - Penalizing the prior probability? - Less Wrong

8 Post author: XiXiDu 17 May 2011 02:44PM

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Comment author: printing-spoon 03 October 2011 01:54:29AM *  2 points [-]

What's the length of the average program for 3^^^^3? I suggest it's 3^^^^3, with every language that gives it a shorter encoding counterbalanced by a language with an exactly longer encoding.

For a sufficiently crazy set of languages you could make this true for 3^^^^3, but in general what's simple in one language is still fairly simple elsewhere. If 3+3 takes b bits to describe in language A it takes b+c bits in language B where c is the length of the shortest interpreter for language B in language A (edit: or less :P).