On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 02:54:01PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > On 11 Oct 2011, at 22:14, Russell Standish wrote: > > >On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 06:03:42PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> > >> > >>> > >>>With COMP, and via your UDA, our observed universe is selected from > >>>the set of all infinite strings (which I call descriptions in my > >>>book). > >> > >>My non observed "future"; or computational extensions, is selected, > >>making the comp physics explainable in term of statistics on > >>computations. This leads to general physical laws invariant for all > >>observers. There is no selection of a particular computations, just > >>a relative indeterminacy bearing on all computations going through > >>my state. In particular we cannot use Bayes theorem, for example. > > > >Like Brent, I don't follow you here. > > See my answer to Brent. Basically, Bayes is induction. Conditional > probability is usual deductive-type probability. >
I certainly appreciate you don't use Bayes' theorem in your work, but don't understand why you say you cannot use it. > >>> > >>>Without the anthropic principle, ISTM that your theory would suffer > >>>the Occam catastrophe fate. How do you avoid that? > >> > >>Is that equivalent with the white rabbits? > > > >No, it is quite the opposite problem. As Einstein purportedly said > >"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not > >simpler". Occam's razor theorem, which comes from Solomonoff and > >Levin's considerations of algorithmic information theory would imply > >that we don't see anything interesting at all. That is the Occam > >catastrophe. Something prevents the world from being too simple. I > >think that something is the Anthropic Principle, but I'm interested if > >you have an alternative suggestion. > > > > You can give me a link to this. It is discussed in my book (page 83). The terminology (Occam catastrophe) is mine, but it is certainly possible that other people may have raised the issue by a different name. > Does the OCCAM catastrophe relies on Bayes? It is a consequence of the Occam's razor theorem, which in turn relies on the Solomonoff-Levin universal prior, and the working assumption of living in an ensemble. It doesn't rely on Bayes' theorem itself, but you can apply Bayes' theorem to the universal prior to get the only effective form of induction known. Li and Vitanyi has a good technical discussion of this, though not of the "catastrophe", as they don't assume an ontology. > What would it be with respect of UD*?. IFAICT, UD* should be equivalent to the all strings ensemble. > I don't use > probability at all in my reasoning, except as a result (first person > indeterminacy) which transforms physics into a probability or > uncertainty or indeterminacy calculus on computations or > arithmetical relations, without using Bayes, nor #-thropic > principles. It wasn't a critique of your UDA and AUDA reasoning, (which I agree does not use probability, nor anthropic principle) but of your statement that Bayes' and the Anthropic Principle is inapplicable. > If you explain this in your book, remind me the pages, or just the > title of your paper (which I have on some of my hard disks). I > deduce (or show how to deduce) the necessary physical laws for all > machine-observer. IIUC, you manage to show that a von Neumann quantum logic arises in one of your hypostases. This requires a (still questionable IMHO) definition of knowledge (Plato's Theatetus one). It is still a long way from there to something like Schrodinger's equation or Born's rule. > I don't infer anything from observations at all > (which would be needed to use an anthropic principle and Bayes). > Well excuse me for thinking that this might be the missing ingredient in your ontology! Cheers. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
