Jeff, (to make it easier to know who is responding to whom, if any of this is cut into postings by others I have inserted a > before JEF ######> to indicate his comments occurred first in time.)
>JEF ######> Edward, can you explain what you might have meant by "based on the likelihood that the probability..."? ED ######> I think my statement -- Dragon selected speech recognition word candidates based on the likelihood that the probability distribution of their model matched the acoustic evidence -- maps directly into your statement that -- likelihood is simply the probability of some data. The "probability of some data" given a models probability distribution can, I think, be properly considered a match between the distribution of the data and the distribution of the model. Maybe in Jef-speak that is not a proper use of the word match, but I think in normal parlance, even in computer science it is. Correct me if I am wrong. Remember at Dragon we were scoring multiple different word models probability distributions against the acoustic data, and those scores were considered to indicate a degree of match between the model and the data. >Jef ######> "Given all the relevant parameters is key, and implies objectivity. Without all the relevant parameters of the likelihood function, you are left with probability, which is inherently subjective. When you said "based on the likelihood that the probability", it seemed that you were somehow (?) confusing the subjective with the objective, which in my opinion, is a theme running through this entire thread. ED ######> According to the above statement all likelihood functions that are computable are subjective, and thus according to your definition just probabilities. This is because it is impossible for a computable likelihood function to include all possibly relevant parameters. No computable system knows enough about the world to know what the relevant parameters are. There always could be an, as yet, un-modeled glitch in the Matrix. Thus, your implication that I had somehow confused the correct definition of likelihood, which would have it be objective, with one that was subjective (because it did not use all relevant parameters), would seem to be a crime committed by any person who has ever talked about the actual likelihood calculations (which would include a majority of the people in the field). Again my offense seems to be using words as most in the field do, rather than in strick adherence to Jef-speak. >Jef ######> How does this map onto your difficulty grasping the significance of Solomonoff induction? Solomonoff induction is an idealized description of learning by a subjective agent interacting with an "objective" (actually "consistent" might be more accurate here) reality. ED ######> Finally, I am learning what our whole back and forth has been about. I wish our correspondence had included more sentences like this earlier on. But if I am guilty of using likelihoods in a way that sullies them by making them subjective, how does that make them any worse than Solomonoff induction? According to the above isnt it is guilty of the same lack of purity because it is describing learning by a subjective agent. Or are you are claiming Solomonoff induction is an objective description of a subjective thing? Words are often stretched so far (although I thought not in Jef-speak). But if Solomonoff induction is based on generalizations assuming knowledge about things it can never know, how is it that any less subjective than a likelihood function calculated without all relevant parameters? Does pretending we know everything about reality make our understanding of it any less subjective? Pretending can allow some useful thought experiments, but are they objective? Are mathematical proofs objective?. How do we know they are based on all the relevant parameters? Isn't math just a creation in our heads, and thus subjective? Yes, scientific evidence suggests it describes some real things in the real world, really well, but that is all based on sensation, and that, according to you is subjective. Ed Porter P.S. Since your hobby is collecting paradoxes, if you have a few that are either particularly insightful or amusing (and hopefully only a sentence or two long), please feel free to share. -----Original Message----- From: Jef Allbright [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 2:46 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] How valuable is Solmononoff Induction for real world AGI? On 11/8/07, Edward W. Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > ED ########>> Most importantly you say my alleged confusion between > subjective and objective maps into my difficulty to grasp the > significance of Solomonoff induction. If you could do so, please > explain what you mean. Given our significantly disjoint backgrounds, the best I hoped for was to point out where you're not going to get a good answer because you're not asking a good question. In contrast to my "unfriendly" negative approach, there's plenty of positive literature available on the web, and the more you poke at, the more it'll tend to fit into place. > I would really like to better understand why so many smart people seem > the think its the bee's knees. I wouldn't call it the "bee's knees" because it doesn't actually tell us how to build a practical machine intelligence, but it does tell us about the nature of the problem, and practical efforts must be consistent with this theory. This discussion seems very similar to a previous futile discussion over the significance of the Principle of Indifference to probabilistic inference. When will I learn? ;-) > You say "'sensation is never received' by any system" and yet the word > is commonly used to describe information received by the brain from > sensory organs, not just in common parlance but also in brain science > literature. The sensory organs may act to transduce, filter, encode and participate in the transfer of stimuli, but stimulus is not sensation. > I don't think your strictly limited usage is the most common. That's my frequent burden, that what I find most interesting tends to be the least common, and thus generally misunderstood. But that's why I find it interesting. As a hobby, I collect paradoxes. <snipped a bunch of text showing that Edward understands the word "subjective"> <reinserted the following text relevant to my use of the word "subjective"> > > MY COMMENT>>>> At Dragon System, then one of the world's leading > > speech recognition companies, I was repeatedly told by our in-house > > PhD in statistics that "likelihood" is the measure of a hypothesis > > matching, or being supported by, evidence. Dragon selected speech > > recognition word candidates based on the likelihood that the > > probability distribution of their model matched the acoustic > > evidence provided by an event, i.e., a spoken utterance. > > If you said Dragon selected word candidates based on their probability > distribution relative to the likelihood function supported by the > evidence provided by acoustic events I'd be with you there. As it is, > when you say "based on the likelihood that the probability..." it > seems you are confusing the subjective with the objective and, for me, > meaning goes out the door. Edward, can you explain what you might have meant by "based on the likelihood that the probability..."? To expand on my previous response, likelihood is simply the probability of some data, given all the relevant parameters. "Given all the relevant parameters" is key, and implies objectivity. Without all the relevant parameters of the likelihood function, you are left with probability, which is inherently subjective. When you said "based on the likelihood that the probability", it seemed that you were somehow (?) confusing the subjective with the objective, which in my opinion, is a theme running through this entire thread. How does this map onto your difficulty grasping the significance of Solomonoff induction? Solomonoff induction is an idealized description of learning by a subjective agent interacting with an "objective" (actually "consistent" might be more accurate here) reality. - Jef ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=63644554-3c91b5
