> -----Original Message----- > From: Matt Mahoney via AGI <[email protected]> > > On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 12:38 PM John Rose <[email protected]> > wrote: > > OK, what then is between a compression agents perspective (or any agent > for that matter) and randomness? Including shades of randomness to > relatively "pure" randomness. > > A string is random if there is no shorter description of the string. > Obviously this depends on which language you use to write descriptions. > Formally, a description is a program that outputs the string. There are no > "shades" of randomness. A string is random or not, but there is no general > algorithm to distinguish them in any language. If there were, then AIXI and > thus general intelligence would be computable. >
Exactly! But you don't know generally if there is a shorter description do you? So the compression agent does its thing and executes programs and tries to find out. Until it runs out of resources for whatever reason. In absolute case there is only random and non-random. In a real world there are shades of randomness I think? Something appears random to one agent but not another? > > From an information theoretic (and thermodynamic) viewpoint in your mind > what happens when you see the symbol for infinity? Semi-quantitatively > describe the thought processes? > > The same thing that happens when you see any other symbols like "2" or "+". > Mathematics is the art of discovering rules for manipulating symbols that help > us make real world predictions. > Not. "2" is more often a data point and "+" an operation (they don't have to be but usually are). "Infinity" is 2+2+2+2+2+.... IOW a program that you execute until you get tired and say just give me a symbol and it's done. Unless you are persistent and keep imagining other programs but at some point you need a symbol. Or, for the duration of the agent's existence it keeps attempting to compute it :) And it could but it would have to suck in the universe. John ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T55454c75265cabe2-M71f2312fba5fe07bf4f00de0 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
