Manfred comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Costanza 29 December 2011 11:23PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 30 December 2011 01:10:30PM 11 points [-]

I would like someone who understands Solomonoff Induction/the univeral prior/algorithmic probability theory to explain how the conclusions drawn in this post affect those drawn in this one. As I understand it, cousin_it's post shows that the probability assigned by the univeral prior is not related to K-complexity; this basically negates the points Eliezer makes in Occam's Razor and in this post. I'm pretty stupid with respect to mathematics, however, so I would like someone to clarify this for me.

Comment author: Manfred 02 January 2012 07:56:11AM *  1 point [-]

I don't think there's very much conflict. The basic idea of cousin-it's post is that the probabilities of generic statements are not described by a simplicity prior. Eliezer's post is about the reasons why the probabilities of every mutually exclusive explanation for your data should look like a simplicity prior (an explanation is a sort of statement, but in order for the arguments to work, you can't assign probabilities to any old explanations - they need to have this specific sort of structure).