Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: David_Gerard 29 July 2013 10:26PM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 30 July 2013 04:14:36AM *  6 points [-]

Hypotheses in this description are probabilistic Turing machines. These can be cashed out to programs in a probabilistic programming language.

I think it's going too far to call this a "problem with Solomonoff induction." Solomonoff induction makes no claims; it's just a tool that you can use or not. Solomonoff induction as a mathematical construct should be cleanly separated from the claim that AIXI is the "best intelligence," which is wrong for several reasons.

Comment author: Transfuturist 30 July 2013 04:21:40AM *  1 point [-]

Can probabilistic Turing machines be considered a generalization of deterministic Turing machines, so that DTMs can be described in terms of PTMs?

Editing in reply to your edit: I thought Solomonoff Induction was made for a purpose. Quoting from Legg's paper:

Solomonoff's induction method is an attempt to design a general all purpose inductive inference system. Ideally such a system would be able to accurately learn any meaningful hypothesis from a bare minimum of appropriately format- ted information.

I'm just pointing out what I see as a limitation in the domain of problems classical Solomonoff Induction can successfully model.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 30 July 2013 05:14:55AM 0 points [-]

Can probabilistic Turing machines be considered a generalization of deterministic Turing machines, so that DTMs can be described in terms of PTMs?

Yes.

I'm just pointing out what I see as a limitation in the domain of problems classical Solomonoff Induction can successfully model.

I don't think anyone claims that this limitation doesn't exist (and anyone who claims this is wrong). But if your concern is with actual coins in the real world, I suppose the hope is that AIXI would eventually learn enough about physics to just correctly predict the outcome of coin flips.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 30 July 2013 12:50:52PM 6 points [-]

The steelman is to replaces coin flips with radioactive decay and then go through with the argument.

Comment author: Pfft 30 July 2013 05:05:50AM 0 points [-]

Yes.