On 12/29/2013 5:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 28 Dec 2013, at 22:23, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/28/2013 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
For a long time I got opponent saying that we cannot generate computationally a random
number, and that is right, if we want generate only that numbers. but a simple
counting algorithm generating all numbers, 0, 1, 2, .... 6999500235148668, ...
generates all random finite incompressible strings,
How can a finite string be incompressible? 6999500235148668 in base 6999500235148669 is
just 10.
You can define a finite string as incompressible when the shorter combinators to
generate it is as lengthy as the string itself.
This definition is not universal for a finite amount of short sequences which indeed
will depend of the language used (here combinators).
Then you can show that such a definition can be made universal by adding some constant,
which will depend of the universal language.
It can be shown that most (finite!) numbers, written in any base, are random in
that sense.
Of course, 10 is a sort of compression of any string X in some base, but if you allow
change of base, you will need to send the base with the number in the message. If you
fix the base, then indeed 10 will be a compression of that particular number base, for
that language, and it is part of incompressibility theory that no definition exist
working for all (small) numbers.
Since all finite numbers are small, I think this means the theory only holds in
the limit.
Brent
Each particular language will have some exception on the incompressibility issue. That
should be part of the role of the variable constant in the general universal definition.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/>
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