DaFranker comments on An Intuitive Explanation of Solomonoff Induction - Less Wrong

53 Post author: Alex_Altair 11 July 2012 08:05AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (210)

Comments (210)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 July 2012 09:38:24AM 2 points [-]

Because it is digital, a neuron either sends the signal, or it doesn't. There is no half-sending the action potential. This can be translated directly into binary. An action potential is a 1, no action potential is a 0. All your sensations, thoughts, and actions can be encoded as a binary sequence over time.

Only if there's discrete timing. If the time elapsed between two 1s can take uncountably many different values...

But the currently proposed laws are incredibly accurate. And they can be represented as a single binary sequence.

Can they? Both QFT and GR are based on real numbers, and the Standard Model has twenty-odd free parameters which are real numbers and hence in principle can require infinitely many bits to be fully specified. (Or do you mean something else by “the currently proposed laws”?)

Comment author: DaFranker 09 July 2012 04:52:16PM *  0 points [-]

Only if there's discrete timing. If the time elapsed between two 1s can take uncountably many different values...

This is also true of modern computers. This time is merely ignored with various hardware tricks to make sure things happen around the time we want them to happen. What it eventually comes down to is the order in which the inputs arrive at each neuron, regardless of how long it took to get there, and the order in which they come out, regardless of how long they take once sent, which in turn decides the order in which other neurons will get their inputs, and so forth.

You could very easily simulate any brain on an infinitely fast UTM by simply having the algorithm take that into account. (Hell, an infinitely fast UTM could simulate everything about the brain, including external stimuli and quantum effects, so it could be made infinitely accurate to the point of being the brain itself)

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit