53,603 research outputs found
Algorithmic Randomness as Foundation of Inductive Reasoning and Artificial Intelligence
This article is a brief personal account of the past, present, and future of
algorithmic randomness, emphasizing its role in inductive inference and
artificial intelligence. It is written for a general audience interested in
science and philosophy. Intuitively, randomness is a lack of order or
predictability. If randomness is the opposite of determinism, then algorithmic
randomness is the opposite of computability. Besides many other things, these
concepts have been used to quantify Ockham's razor, solve the induction
problem, and define intelligence.Comment: 9 LaTeX page
Absolutely No Free Lunches!
This paper is concerned with learners who aim to learn patterns in infinite
binary sequences: shown longer and longer initial segments of a binary
sequence, they either attempt to predict whether the next bit will be a 0 or
will be a 1 or they issue forecast probabilities for these events. Several
variants of this problem are considered. In each case, a no-free-lunch result
of the following form is established: the problem of learning is a formidably
difficult one, in that no matter what method is pursued, failure is
incomparably more common that success; and difficult choices must be faced in
choosing a method of learning, since no approach dominates all others in its
range of success. In the simplest case, the comparison of the set of situations
in which a method fails and the set of situations in which it succeeds is a
matter of cardinality (countable vs. uncountable); in other cases, it is a
topological matter (meagre vs. co-meagre) or a hybrid computational-topological
matter (effectively meagre vs. effectively co-meagre)
On the alleged simplicity of impure proof
Roughly, a proof of a theorem, is “pure” if it draws only on what is “close” or “intrinsic” to that theorem. Mathematicians employ a variety of terms to identify pure proofs, saying that a pure proof is one that avoids what is “extrinsic,” “extraneous,” “distant,” “remote,” “alien,” or “foreign” to the problem or theorem under investigation. In the background of these attributions is the view that there is a distance measure (or a variety of such measures) between mathematical statements and proofs. Mathematicians have paid little attention to specifying such distance measures precisely because in practice certain methods of proof have seemed self- evidently impure by design: think for instance of analytic geometry and analytic number theory. By contrast, mathematicians have paid considerable attention to whether such impurities are a good thing or to be avoided, and some have claimed that they are valuable because generally impure proofs are simpler than pure proofs. This article is an investigation of this claim, formulated more precisely by proof- theoretic means. After assembling evidence from proof theory that may be thought to support this claim, we will argue that on the contrary this evidence does not support the claim
- …