twanvl comments on Intelligence Metrics with Naturalized Induction using UDT - Less Wrong

13 Post author: Squark 21 February 2014 12:23PM

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Comment author: twanvl 24 February 2014 09:53:50PM 1 point [-]

Right, but P_0(s) is defined for statements s in F. Then suddenly you talk about P_0(s | there is no contradiction of length <= D), but the thing between parentheses is not a statement in F. So, what is the real definition of P_D? And how would I compute it?

Comment author: Squark 25 February 2014 09:55:29AM *  1 point [-]

I'm probably explaining it poorly in the post. P0 is not just a function of statements in F. P0 is a probability measure on the space of truth assignments i.e. functions {statement in F} -> {truth, false}. This probability measure is defined by making the truth value of each statement an independent random variable with 50/50 distribution.

PD is produced from P0 by imposing the condition "there is no contradiction of length <= D" on the truth assignment, i.e. we set the probability of all truth assignments that violate the condition to 0 and renormalize the probabilities of all other assignments. In other words P_D(s) = # {D-consistent truth assignments in which s is assigned true} / # {D-consistent truth assignments}.

Technicality: There is an infinite number of statements so there is an infinite number of truth assignments. However there is only a finite number of statements that can figure in contradictions of length <= D. Therefore all the other statements can be ignored (i.e. assumed to have independent probabilities of 1/2 like in P_0). More formally, the sigma-algebra of measurable sets on the space of truth assignments is generated by sets of the form {truth assignment T | T(s) = true} and {truth assignment T | T(s) = false}. The set of D-consistent truth assignments is in this sigma algebra and has positive probability w.r.t. our measure (as long as F is D-consistent) so we can use this set to form a conditional probability measure.

Comment author: twanvl 25 February 2014 03:07:41PM 0 points [-]

Thanks, that cleared things up.