On Sun, Dec 21, 2025 at 3:59 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 3:05 PM James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> We're almost there, again, Matt. Ask not what I would do with this >> information, ask why we don't have this information in the first place. >> > > Because the information we want is causation, and compression only tells > you about correlation. > Every high school physics student knows that even systems as simple 3-body gravitational interaction cannot be described by correlation. It requires going beyond Shannon or Rissannen or any other noise from the statistics world. It requires feedback. Although some might claim that all it requires in a discrete and finite universe is a finite state machine, not a UTM, it does at least require that much. There's a lot of work going on in the area of dynamical systems identification from measurement data. But I hear you about "you can't know what causes what". This is *always* the argument trotted out when people in power stop losing their ability to impose their theories of causality on others and start being challenged by scientists. Back in the days of the 30 Years War it was all about which theocracy's "miracles" were permitted to vitiate causal laws. Nowadays, it may not be so much about "miracles" as simple truth claims about the futility of resistance to impersonal forces that are completely impervious to agency. People in power and those who identify with them like to trot that one out whenever there is an argument about policy interventions. Like I said, we're there again only on a global scale with powers that dwarf those available at the dawn of artillery. I'd really like to avoid having to go through that again. > > We can easily compress a table of global statistics to find a negative > correlation between economic development and fertility. But that doesn't > say which causes the other. > > The problem with using AI is that people upvote answers they agree with, > rather than the correct answers. I'm not ready to outsource my brain yet. > >> >> *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + > delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> > Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T6cf3be509c7cd2f2-Mf4a17db4bdabb3576ef3d029> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T6cf3be509c7cd2f2-M21862e03ac1b394666ee1761 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
