Complexity and Intelligence by Eliezer Yudkowsky

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/complexity-and.html

by MikeCapone • 18 years ago

9 12 18 years ago

ars• 18 years ago

Talk about a straw man argument! He builds up an entire argument, then shoots it down, and manages to generate pages of text, all based on a flawed premise. I don't agree that you can ignore the size of the working set when defining complexity.

Quite frankly it's idiotic to do so. If you allow that, then why not just create every single possible permutation of every single possible thing? (Not randomly, start at 1 and start counting.)

The complexity of that is 1 bit.

So, basically everything, no matter what, has a complexity of 1 bit.

What a pointless way of defining complexity. (Pointless for talking about the universe anyway, maybe it's useful in more specific math.)

elijahbuck• 18 years ago

Everything does not have a complexity of one bit. The object you describe with a complexity of 1 bit doesn't specify the object you want. In the permutation, there may be a string that specifies some universe, but then you have to specify where in the permutation that string is and how long it is, thus increasing the complexity required to describe that particular universe object.

DaniFong3• 18 years ago

Wouldn't the 'Kolmogorov complexity of the universe' include initial conditions? How can we know that these aren't significant?

jerf4• 18 years ago

The way he defined for most of that essay, it is more proper to speak of the "Kolmogorov complexity of the multiverse". The infinite possible starting conditions of your brand of physics merely adds the K-complexity of the TM necessary to describe the possible initial states, likely quite small. (Eliezer believes that many-worlds is the only possibility for the universe we live in, I believe.)

The K-complexity of this specific universe is much higher, because it would necessarily require a description of the multiverse and some sort of identifier of how to pick out the universe of interest.

dhs2• 18 years ago

I don't understand this. If the multiverse is a system of a certain (appearantly low) complexity, it should not be allowed to have sub-systems like the "universe of interest" which have a higher complexity. Also, I don't see why the information which identifies a certain subsystem/universe should only be available from the point of view of that subsystem, increasing its complexity, but not the complexity of the system it's a part of.

DaniFong3• 18 years ago

If that's what he's talking about, then we'd need many less then 500 bits: we might as well run the machine that enumerates every Turing machine, and then runs one step for the first n machines, then the first n+1 machines, etc. This is as much a multiverse as any.

queensnake• 18 years ago

I hope that guy goes somewhere with all his talk, eventually.

Complexity and Intelligence by Eliezer Yudkowsky

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