On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 02:58:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > On 30 May 2016, at 02:52, Russell Standish wrote: > > >On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 05:38:59PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >>>On Friday, May 27, 2016 at 3:58:11 AM UTC+10, John Clark wrote: > >>>Richard Dawkins said "The theory of evolution by cumulative > >>>natural selection is the only theory we know of that is, in > >>>principle, capable of explaining the existence of organized > >>>complexity." > >> > >>This is just ridiculous. Elementary arithmetic leads to all possible > >>levels of complexity, from computable linear and polynomial to the > >>degrees of unsolvability (sigma_i, pi_i, delta_i, i = 0, 1, ...). > >> > >>Some percolation process, some universal cellular automata, or > >>simply the Mandelbrot set, illustrate also how complexity can arise > >>from very simple iteration of very simple number (natural, or not) > >>number relations. > >> > > > >I am ambivalent on this. Technically, measuring complexity by means of > >a Turing machine, as in Kolmogorov-Chaitin-Solomonoff complexity, an > >algorithmic process such as your examples above cannot lead to an > >increase of complexity. > > > >The only way we can say that the aforementioned examples lead to an > >increase in complexity is if the algorithmic process in question > >remained forever cryptic to the observer measuring the complexity. > > But Kolmogorov-Chaitin-Solomonoff complexity is only one sort of > complexity among many others. Here I am alluding to the program > solving complexity like the Blum measure for learning, or like the > usual P/NP and the arithmetical hierarchy. When Clark mention > organized complexity, he cannot allude to Kolmogorov complexity, but > a more structural type of complexity which can be deep, but have low > Kolmogorov complexity. Indeed, biological and mathematical > complexity is fill of redundancies making them highly compressible. >
He is alluding to complexity in the eye of the observer. It is related to KCS complexity, without being identical to it, hence my follow up comment on learning processed (quoted below). > > > > > >I don't any form of proof that a learning process cannot learn the > >underlying algorithm of say the evolution of a Mandelbrot set. > > Indeed. The DU itself is quite learnable by simple algorithm. And it > generates all the complexity of the kind we can encounter in a > brain. > Hmm - the "output" of the UD (ie UD*) is a very low complexity object. The complexity you refer to is actually UD* seen from the inside by a computationlist observer. That complexity has indeed arisen through an evolutionary process: mutation via the FPI, selection via the fact that observers do not see all of the UD*, but just one single history and heredity via the fact that only consistent continuations count. > > > >On the other hand, if the process involved were genuinely random, and > >even your FPI satisfies this, then evolution operating on it will > >generate plenty of complexity. > > Such randomness plays some role for having the right measure on what > is already complex. But it does not add structural types of > complexity, (usually it can even destroy it). Structural complexity, > well even Kolmogorov complexity is already generated by the simple > counting algorithm in base 2 or bigger. The counting in base two > generates all incompressible finite and infinite strings. If that > play a role in evolution, that will play a role in arithmetic. But > the existence of such role is still speculative. > The counting algorithm produces a simple object. Complexity is generated by selecting some subset of that simple object, and it is the selection which creates the complexity. > > > >It is a reasonable hypothesis, though > >by no means proven, that evolution is the only possible sort of > >process that can create complexity. > > It might be the only possible way carbon life could generate the > actual, relative to us human, form of bio-complexity we know. But it > should be obvious that the UD generates all life form complexity > without using carbon, even if for the bio-complexity we know, such > carbon atoms behavior will be generated itself before the biological > process is proceeded. The simulation of the Milky way, at all levels > of description, is among what the UD does, soon or later. > To restate above, you are confusing the complexity observed by a putative internal observer (which by computationalism assumption must exist), and the complexity of the UD*. The former is generated by an evolutionary process, and high, the latter is low (being equal to the KCS complexity of the UD). -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected] Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
