I was looking old posts and I found this one interesting. Sorry if my reply comes a little late.
As we consider larger sets of information, all possible distributions tend get as frequent as the others. That's simple: if we have two sets of information, and each one has its own significative patterns, as we get the two sets together the original patterns have a chance of getting "dissolved". So, that would make us think that information to describe the universe is not compressible, because all possible patterns would occur as frequently as each other. The problem is that when we get to those conclusions, we are assuming that things in our world happen randomly. (If things don't happen randomly, then as we consider larger and larger sets of information, some patterns should remain.) In fact Physics are not random. But let's go a little further, and here's what I want to say. Physics are deterministic. "Deterministic" means that given a system in one state, the following state can be inferred by applying physics rules. It also works backwards: a given state has only one previous state - but that is more difficult to see. This can be seen more clearly by absurd: If Physics were not deterministic, then things would happen without any cause. The first author to talk about this was Descartes. So, if we had all the information of the universe in a specific instant, then all the past and future could be calculated. Moreover: firstly we were talking about losing patterns as we considered larger spaces. But if patterns do remain between sets of information, then as we unite different spaces, we can recognize more general patterns. Then as we consider larger sets of information, the universe would become not less compressible, but more compressible (because the more general patterns take less bits). For imagination only: think of the Big Bang. Possibly the amount of existing information was much reduced. Consider that if the complexity of a system is n - the amount of information when compressed - then that quantity can only grow if the system receives information from outside itself. Then, since there should be no system outside the universe itself, all the information we have is the same we had at the big bang, that "reduced" amount. Then all the information we see everyday is the fractal consequence of a reduced set of information. Cheers Pablo > Shane Legg wrote: > > > > Hi Cliff, > >> And if the "compressibility of the Universe" is an assumption, is > >> there a way we might want to clarify such an assumption, i.e., aren't > >> there numerical values that attach to the *likelihood* of gravity > >> suddenly reversing direction; numerical values attaching to the > >> likelihood of physical phenomena which spontaneously negate like the > >> chess-reward pattern; etc.? > > > > This depends on your view of statistics and probability. I'm a > > Bayesian and so I'd say that these things depend on your prior > > and how much evidence you have. Clearly the evidence that gravity > > stays the same is rather large and so the probability that it's > > going to flip is extremely super hyper low and the prior doesn't > > matter to much... > > To be specific: The Kolmogorov complexity of a constant universe is less, > so the prior probabilities of universes that are consistent with ours up > until now, but then suddenly flip tomorrow, are lower under Solomonoff's > universal prior. I think Jurgen has also pointed this out. > (http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/) > > -- > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > > ------- > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/? [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Registre su dominio. El primer paso de un proyecto exitoso en Internet. http://www.montevideo.net.uy/hnnoticiaj1.exe?9,0 ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
