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>> We learn precisely nothing from this > That's literally never true about anything. But if this were true, data compression would be impossible.
by cosmojg 3y ago
>> We learn precisely nothing from this
> That's literally never true about anything.
But if this were true, data compression would be impossible.
- moffkalast 3y agoOK you got me there I guess, but even learning that we've learned nothing is learning in itself. Otherwise the act of compressing wouldn't give any more information.
- User23 3y agoRead up on Kolmogorov complexity.
- moffkalast 3y agoKnowing that, say, some file contains a sequence of zeros you can run through RLE is information. That part is usually not part of the information content calculation, but without it you can't do compression because the file could just be 100% entropy. Ergo it's useful information. That was sort of my original point anyway, knowing you don't know something makes it a known unknown instead of an unknown unknown. Or in this case a known known.
- User23 3y agoYes. The encoding/encoder tuple is part of the definition of K complexity. Sipser gives a lucid explanation in his textbook and I highly recommend it.