The reference by Rathmanner & Hutter presents a useful analogy. It argues that Kolmogorov complexity (and Solomonoff induction) are best viewed as a conceptual

The reference by Rathmanner & Hutter presents a useful analogy. It argues that Kolmogorov complexity (and Solomonoff induction) are best viewed as a conceptual gold standard, like a perfect chess computer that does an exhaustive tree search. Practical methods are approximations. There are a few results where researchers were able to automatically infer evolutionary trees and such, by using a standard compression algorithm in place of K(x).