Kawoomba comments on Reductionism - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 March 2008 06:26AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 February 2013 07:39:54PM 2 points [-]

Solomonoff induction is about putting probability distributions on observations - you're looking for the combination of the simplest program that puts the highest probability on observations. Technically, the original SI doesn't talk about causal models you're embedded in, just programs that assign probabilities to experiences.

Generalizing somewhat, for QM as it appears to humans, the generalized-SI-selected hypothesis would be something along the lines of one program that extrapolated the wavefunction, then another program that looked for people inside it and translated the underlying physics into the "observed data" from their perspective, then put probabilities on the sequences of data corresponding to integral squared modulus. Note that you also need an interface from atoms to experiences just to e.g. translate a classical atomic theory of matter into "I saw a blue sky", and an implicit theory of anthropics/sum-probability-measure too if the classical universe is large enough to have more than one copy of you.

Comment author: Kawoomba 05 February 2013 07:42:35PM 1 point [-]

Thanks for this. I'll mull it over.

Comment author: private_messaging 05 February 2013 10:29:42PM 1 point [-]