Jesse Mazer writes:
> What are people's ideas about the problem of a global measure on
> "everything?"
If I summarize correctly, you give the following 4 possibilities:
1) there is no global measure
2) "one distinct structure, one vote"
3) only one measure is consistent with some other more basic assumptions
4) work backwards from the computations occurring _inside_ a universe
I suggest to distinguish a 5th:
5) although there is no global measure (as in option 1), Solomonoff's
universal prior allows us to make predictions _as_if_ there were one,
because it approximates any candidate measure within O(1).
Do you feel this is distinct from option 1?
For me, the importance is in the distinction between choosing the
universal prior as _the_ measure, and taking it as an approximation of
_any_ measure.
Kinds regards,
Michiel de Jong.
http://www.cwi.nl/~mbj
Received on Wed Mar 14 2001 - 02:19:01 PST