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Matt,
Unless you raise the level of
your replies, I won't bother responding any more.
You asked about canonical
forms. I gave a very simple, very clear explanation of why your previous
assertions were nonsensical. However, I will try one last time . . . .
>> I
really only need to know if a string is a canonical representation of
Wikipedia.
OK. A string is definitely
NOT a canonical representation if substrings can be deleted and nothing is lost
(this is just a rephrasing of my duplication statement -- nothing new at
all). Clearly, your Wikipedia string is not a canonical representation of
the knowledge in itself since major chunks can be deleted without losing any
knowledge.
The rest of the definition is
that the canonical string must contain all of the knowledge in the original
string. Both of us realize that this is not easy to test (so you don't
need snotty requests for an attachment/program that would effectively solve a
large percentage of the open questions in knowledge representation and
AGI).
>> Oh,
wait... there can only be one canonical form.
False. Badly, badly wrong
in fact. Would you like to retract this statement or should I assume that
you're not worth conversing with until you've gotten up to speed enough to
realize why this is such a silly statement?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 12:00
PM
Subject: Re: [agi] Lossy *&* lossless
compression
Mark,
I didn't get your attachment, the program that tells me if an arbitrary text
string is in canonical form or not. Actually, if it will make it any
easier, I really only need to know if a string is a canonical representation
of Wikipedia. Oh, wait... there can only be one canonical form. I
guess then all you have to do is store the canonical form and compare the
input with it. After you solve this simple, easy problem and send me
the program, I will solve the much harder problem of converting Wikipedia to
canonical form.
-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----
Original Message ---- From: Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To:
[email protected]Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 11:30:44 AM Subject:
Re: [agi] Lossy *&* lossless compression
I reject your
nonsensical claim.
>> If you claim that this is not in canonical form, then prove it.
Specify a criteria for canonical form, a pass/fail
test.
By definition, a
canonical form should not have duplication. Your data has massive
duplication (particularly when looked at on the knowledge level) and is
therefore not canonical. Simple enough for you?
>> Do you see my point now?
No, all I see if
that you're so invested in lossless (at
the bit-level) compression that you're not even willing to try to
work to get past it.
-----
Original Message -----
Sent:
Saturday, August 26, 2006 9:40 PM
Subject:
Re: [agi] Lossy *&* lossless compression
Suppose
I claim that text8.zip available at http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/textdata.html is in
canonical form. The procedure and a program for generating it is
described at the bottom of that page. The output consists of only the
lowercase letters a-z and spaces. If you claim that this is not in
canonical form, then prove it. Specify a criteria for canonical form,
a pass/fail test. I want an algorithm or a program, no hand waving or
generalities. Input an arbitrary string, output yes or
no.Do you see my point now?
-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----
Original Message ---- From: Mark Waser
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected]Sent: Saturday,
August 26, 2006 8:52:27 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Lossy *&* lossless
compression
>> I
think that either putting Wikipedia in canonical form, or recognizing that
it is in canonical form, are two equally difficult problems. So the
problem does not go away easily.
Um. I think you missed my point. The
compression program should be able to take the Wikipedia in it's current
form and the decompression program should be able to output it in canonical
form. Make the contestants do all the difficult work, not the
judges. (and recognizing canonical form should be easy, ensuring it's
completeness is likely to be a real problem, but that's what you have the
other contestants for . . . . :-)
-----
Original Message -----
Sent:
Saturday, August 26, 2006 5:33 PM
Subject:
Re: [agi] Lossy *&* lossless compression
I
think that either putting Wikipedia in canonical form, or recognizing that
it is in canonical form, are two equally difficult problems. So the
problem does not go away easily.
-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----
Original Message ---- From: Mark Waser < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected]Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006
4:51:07 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Lossy *&* lossless
compression
>> Mark suggested putting Wikipedia in
a canonical form, which would remove the distinction between lossless and
lossy compression.
Hmmm. Interesting . . . .
Actually, I didn't suggest exactly that --
though I can see how you got that impression. I suggested that the
decompression program should output the Wikipedia in canonical form
meaning that it would be lossy as far as information is concerned (i.e. it
loses the exact bit sequence of the input) but it would be lossless as far
as knowledge is concerned. Putting the Wikipedia in a canonical form
(or -- developing a good canonical form to put the Wikipedia into) strikes
me as the largest part of the challenge (and thus, not something that you
want to -- or should -- take on as contest organizers).
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 3:29
PM
Subject: Re: [agi] Lossy *&* lossless
compression
> First let me respond to Boris and Mark. I
agree. Mark suggested putting Wikipedia in a canonical form, which
would remove the distinction between lossless and lossy compression.
This will be hard, but Boris made an important observation that useful
data is generally compressable and useless data (noise) is not. I
don't think the problem can be solved completely but there is clearly room
for improvement.
>
> Eliezer suggests putting a model of the
universe on a USB drive and then running the model to predict how many
fingers he is holding up. Let's assume that is possible.
Stephen Wolfram suggests the model, if one exists, might only be a few
lines of code.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science>
> But we must solve a few other problems
first.
>
> 1. It may be hard to find such a model. We
cannot tell whether the apparent randomness of quantum mechanics is truly
random or generated by a deterministic, but random appearing
process. This happens in cryptography. The only way to
distinguis between true random data and an encrypted block of zero bits is
to break the decryption. The former is not compressable, the latter
is.
>
> 2. Assuming we solve this mystery of the universe and
it turns out to be deterministic, we still have the problem of running the
code on a computer that resides within the universe. If the universe
is infinite, then it is possible because one Turing machine can simulate
another. If the universe is finite (as quantum theory and the Big
Bang suggest, also the lack of real Turing machines), then it is not
possible because a state machine cannot simulate itself. Having the
USB drive simulate all of the universe except itself would resolve this
problem, but then if the USB drive resides outside the universe, how do we
read the result?
>
> 3. Assuming we overcome this obstacle,
it may be that the program will say how many fingers, but in that case the
program also completely determines my behavior and might not allow me to
answer.
>
> -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Eliezer S.
Yudkowsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
To: [email protected]> Sent:
Friday, August 25, 2006 8:08:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [agi] Lossy
*&* lossless compression
>
> Matt Mahoney
wrote:
>>
>> DEL has a lossy model, and nothing
compresses smaller. Is it smarter
>> than
PKZip?
>>
>> Let me state one more time why a lossless
model has more knowledge.
>> If x and x' have the same meaning to
a lossy compressor (they
>> compress to identical codes), then
the lossy model only knows
>> p(x)+p(x'). A lossless model
also knows p(x) and p(x'). You can
>> argue that if x and
x' are not distinguishable then this extra
>> knowledge is not
important. But all text strings are distinguishable
>> to
humans.
>
> Suppose I give you a USB drive that contains a
lossless model of the
> entire universe excluding the USB drive - a
bitwise copy of all quark
> positions and field strengths.
>
> (Because deep in your heart, you know that underneath the atoms,
> underneath the quarks, at the uttermost bottom of reality, are
tiny
> little XML files...)
>
> Let's say that you've
got the entire database, and a Python interpreter
> that can
process it at any finite speed you care to specify.
>
> Now
write a program that looks at those endless fields of numbers, and
> says how many fingers I'm holding up behind my back.
>
> Looks like you'll have to compress that data first.
>
> --
> Eliezer S.
Yudkowsky
http://singinst.org/>
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>
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