Re: Optimal Prediction

From: Saibal Mitra <smitra.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 18:16:52 +0100

Didn't Hilbert say that physics is far too complicated for physicists?

Saibal

----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
Van: "Juergen Schmidhuber" <juergen.domain.name.hidden>
Aan: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
CC: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Verzonden: donderdag 28 maart 2002 18:09
Onderwerp: Re: Optimal Prediction


>
> Bill Jefferys wrote:
>
> > It's pointless wasting my time on this. As both Russell and I pointed
> > out, this is a standard example that is cited by people who are
> > knowledgeable about the AP. Either you have a different definition of
> > predictive power than the rest of us do, or you don't understand
> > Hoyle's very clearly written paper. In either case, it would be
> > foolish of me to continue the thread.
> >
> > Goodbye. <plonk>
> >
> > Bill
> >
> >"Don't try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the
pig."
>
>
> Predictive power is measurable by standard concepts of probability
> theory
> and complexity theory. You may choose to ignore this, but don't include
> all those who don't among "the rest of us".
>
> Write down all assumptions, derive the consequences, and observe that
> the
> AP _by itself_ cannot predict anything nontrivial.
>
> Fortunately Hoyle was more careful than some who cite him - he just
> wrote: "the results...were obtained subject to certain assumptions
> ...have not been demonstrated in a manner free from all doubt.
> Nevertheless, the number of assumptions made was much less
> than the number of results obtained."
>
> Thus he informally invoked Occam's razor: find short descriptions that
> explain a lot. Occam's razor is not the AP. It is formally treated by
> the theory of inductive inference. Although this theory is at the heart
> of what physicists are doing, some of them are not yet fully aware of
> it.
>
> Juergen (will be out of town for a while)
>
Received on Thu Mar 28 2002 - 09:19:29 PST