More people remember NKS than remember AIXI because Wolfram did a great job
of popularizing the idea that the universe is emergent from discreet
computation. However I don't find his work very interesting compared to
earlier work such as that of the folks associated with the Cambridge
Language Research Unit who, circa 1960, came up with a theory of language
elaborated in Frederick Parker Rhodes's 1981 book "The Theory of
Indistinguishables
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Theory_of_Indistinguishables/zZvuCAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover>
".
In that book, Rhodes published his derivation of the proton to electron
mass ratio based on this theory of language. An outgrowth of that work was
a semi-formal "Alternative Natural Philosophy Association" or ANPA, during
the 80s this led to a Stanford-based group calling itself "ANPA-West" under
the aegis of SLAC particle physicist Pierre Noyes. I became involved with
that group as part of my effort to find a theoretic foundation for computer
programming languages as part of the HP E-Speak ("Internet chapter 2")
project. An interesting result from that was a patent by one of Pierre's
associates, Michael Manthey
<https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160148110A1/en>, a CS professor.
I've never seen Wolfram reference any of that lineage in his work on NKS,
which is quite a shame given not just their priority but apparent
successful pursuit of what Wolfram pursues.
On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 12:35 PM John Rose <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Monday, March 08, 2021, at 10:43 AM, James Bowery wrote:
>
> I simply assumed that the premiere AGI theory, which AIXI _is_, would be
> sufficiently familiar to the denizens of an "AGI" group to sustain the use
> of acronyms for its two sub-theories.
>
>
> Oh AIXI! I remember now! It was the main discussion on this list hashed
> and rehashed like a decade ago... So was NKS but not nearly as much. Many
> people don't remember what NKS is. Maybe AIXI can be reformulated in NKS
> with some sort of practical efficiency? Probably not.
>
> Ockham's Razor as rigorously formalized by the size prior of AIXI's AIT
> subtheory is useful to sweep away the egregious politicization of the
> phrase "algorithmic bias".
>
>
> IMO exceptions to Ockham's Razor are more important to AGI than Ockham's
> Razor itself. But that's just a personal opinion.
>
> All jesting aside AIXI is good :) We cool. As is/was AIXI lite, the
> "implementable" version (I forget the acronym on that one).
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