[LINK] Counterfactual Strategies

2 Strilanc 17 June 2014 07:29PM

 

Link:

Counterintuitive Counterfactual Strategies

 

Overview:

Over the weekend, I was thinking about the variant of Newcomb's Paradox where both boxes are transparent. The one where, unless you precommit to taking a visibly empty box instead of both boxes, omega can self-consistently give you less money.

I was wondering if I could make this kind of "sacrifice yourself for yourself" situation happen without involving a predictor guessing your choice before you made it. Turns out you can.

[LINK] If correlation doesn’t imply causation, then what does?

4 Strilanc 12 July 2013 05:39AM

A post about how, for some causal models, causal relationships can be inferred without doing experiments that control one of the random variables.

If correlation doesn’t imply causation, then what does?

To help address problems like the two example problems just discussed, Pearl introduced a causal calculus. In the remainder of this post, I will explain the rules of the causal calculus, and use them to analyse the smoking-cancer connection. We’ll see that even without doing a randomized controlled experiment it’s possible (with the aid of some reasonable assumptions) to infer what the outcome of a randomized controlled experiment would have been, using only relatively easily accessible experimental data, data that doesn’t require experimental intervention to force people to smoke or not, but which can be obtained from purely observational studies.

Estimating the kolmogorov complexity of the known laws of physics?

10 Strilanc 08 July 2013 04:30AM

In the post Complexity and Intelligence, Eliezer says that the Kolmogorov Complexity (length of shortest equivalent computer program) of the laws of physics is about 500 bits:

Suppose you ran a Turing machine with unlimited tape, so that, starting from our laws of physics, it simulated our whole universe - not just the region of space we see around us, but all regions of space and all quantum branches. [...]

Then the "Kolmogorov complexity" of that entire universe [...] would be 500 bits, or whatever the size of the true laws of physics when written out as equations on a sheet of paper.

Where did this 500 come from?

I googled around for estimates on the Kolmogorov Complexity of the laws of physics, but didn't find anything. Certainly nothing as concrete as 500.

I asked about it on the physics stack exchange, but haven't received any answers as of yet.

I considered estimating it myself, but doing that well involves significant time investment. I'd need to learn the standard model well enough to write a computer program that simulated it (however inefficiently or intractably, it's the program length that matters not it's time or memory performance).

Based on my experience programming, I'm sure it wouldn't take a million bits. Probably less than ten thousand. The demo scene does some pretty amazing things with 4096 bits. But 500 sounds like a teeny tiny amount to mention off hand for fitting the constants, the forces, the particles, and the mathematical framework for doing things like differential equations. The fundamental constants alone are going to consume ~20-30 bits each.

Does anyone have a reference, or even a more worked-through example of an estimate?