klkblake comments on Open Thread: September 2011 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Pavitra 03 September 2011 07:50PM

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Comment author: klkblake 05 September 2011 11:18:19AM 3 points [-]

I'm confused about Kolmogorov complexity. From what I understand, it is usually expressed in terms of Universal Turing Machines, but can be expressed in any Turing-complete language, with no difference in the resulting ordering of programs. Why is this? Surely a language that had, say, natural language parsing as a primitive operation would have a very different complexity ordering than a Universal Turing Machine?

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 05 September 2011 11:40:09AM 1 point [-]

The Kolmogorov complexity changes by an amount bounded by a constant when you change languages, but the order of the programs is very much allowed to change. Where did you get that it wasn't?

Comment author: printing-spoon 09 September 2011 12:26:42AM 1 point [-]

(this is because all Turing-complete languages can simulate each other)

Comment author: klkblake 05 September 2011 10:52:19PM 0 points [-]

I knew Kolmogorov complexity was used in Solomonoff induction, and I was under the impression that using Universal Turing Machines was an arbitrary choice.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 05 September 2011 10:54:14PM 1 point [-]

Solomonoff induction is only optimal up to a constant, and the constant will change depending on the language.