mjgeddes comments on Open Problems Related to Solomonoff Induction - Less Wrong

27 Post author: Wei_Dai 06 June 2012 12:26AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 24 August 2012 08:05:56AM -2 points [-]

Solomonoff Induction is supposed to be a formalization of Occam’s Razor, and it’s confusing that the formalization has a free parameter in the form of a universal Turing machine that is used to define the notion of complexity. What’s the significance of the fact that we can’t seem to define a parameterless concept of complexity? That complexity is subjective?

In the Kolmogorov-Chaitin Minimum description length approach, the subject must pick a Turing machine whose operations describe the basic operations believed to represent 'simplicity' by the subject.

Kant postulated that all knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. The problem, then, is how this is possible. Kant's solution was to reason that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are the synthetic, a priori laws of nature that we know apply to all objects before we experience them.

Kants apriori categories could be equivalent to the 'basic operations' of the aforementioned Turing machine. In the language of computer science, this would be equivalent to specifying an upper ontology defining all the fundamental ontological primatives in the domain 'reality'.