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With "right" I meant the explanation which is actually correct. The preference for simple explanations is only a bias for lack of a better criterion to choose;

With "right" I meant the explanation which is actually correct. The preference for simple explanations is only a bias for lack of a better criterion to choose; but typically there are lots of more substantive reasons why one explanation is better than the other (e.g., by looking at how it ties in with other theories). The idea of simplicity is quite arbitrary. In machine learning there is an analogue in Minimum Description Length learning. It turns out that there the kind of representation is crucial; a hypothesis can be minimal under one representation, but not the other; ergo, what is "simple" is not a straightforward question, and therefore the heuristic is somewhat arbitrary. A "goal" to evolution may sound complex to you, but from an information theoretic perspective, the opposite, namely actual, complete randomness, is the most complex thing possible ... The whole point of this is: we don't really know, the best we can say is "I won't assume things I don't have evidence for." Lastly, your "raise more questions than they answer" is the hallmark of philosophical problems ...

beagle3 14y ago
> With "right" I meant the explanation which is actually correct. Outside of math (and by extension, mathematical models and virtual computer systems), there is no such thing as "correct". We have physical models we tend to rely on because they give good predictions. But there's no "correct" explanation for physical phenomena. Newton's mechanics were "correct" until Schroedinger and Heisenberg showed they weren't. And I'm sure within a hundred years, we'll have an even better model than modern quantum mechanics.
SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
> Lastly, your "raise more questions than they answer" is the hallmark of philosophical problems ... Yes, and it is also a hallmark of bullshit and the content-free. The reasoning that "All X have the property Y. I have something here that is Y, therefore it must be an X" must be a classic logical fallacy, no?
SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
> With "right" I meant the explanation which is actually correct. But that's not where you started out, you started with (at least) two hypotheses that fit the facts: > I mean everything that's considered evidence of evolution could also be considered evidence of teleology Comparing right to wrong would be quite a straw man.
Dn_Ab 14y ago
If you have say two networks that are based on different choices of perspective in coding a MDL with wildly differing lengths and better performance of the larger one, I would be highly suspicious as to whether the the poor performer is properly built from a sensible simplifying metric. In terms of a general intuition of how the choice of similarly expressive representations affect complexity, one can look to Kolmogorov Complexity. For any two languages used to compute the KC of some string, there is only an additive translative constant for each possible input. The asymptotics of how each language grows its representation with respect to input size by far will dominate such translative overheads. This is sufficient for philosophical purposes. Although in the practical case these choices matter and MDL was created specifically to treat these practicalities.

beagle3 14y ago

> With "right" I meant the explanation which is actually correct. Outside of math (and by extension, mathematical models and virtual computer systems), there is no such thing as "correct". We have physical models we tend to rely on because they give good predictions. But there's no "correct" explanation for physical phenomena. Newton's mechanics were "correct" until Schroedinger and Heisenberg showed they weren't. And I'm sure within a hundred years, we'll have an even better model than modern quantum mechanics.

SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago

> Lastly, your "raise more questions than they answer" is the hallmark of philosophical problems ... Yes, and it is also a hallmark of bullshit and the content-free. The reasoning that "All X have the property Y. I have something here that is Y, therefore it must be an X" must be a classic logical fallacy, no?

SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago

> With "right" I meant the explanation which is actually correct. But that's not where you started out, you started with (at least) two hypotheses that fit the facts: > I mean everything that's considered evidence of evolution could also be considered evidence of teleology Comparing right to wrong would be quite a straw man.

Dn_Ab 14y ago

If you have say two networks that are based on different choices of perspective in coding a MDL with wildly differing lengths and better performance of the larger one, I would be highly suspicious as to whether the the poor performer is properly built from a sensible simplifying metric. In terms of a general intuition of how the choice of similarly expressive representations affect complexity, one can look to Kolmogorov Complexity. For any two languages used to compute the KC of some string, there is only an additive translative constant for each possible input. The asymptotics of how each language grows its representation with respect to input size by far will dominate such translative overheads. This is sufficient for philosophical purposes. Although in the practical case these choices matter and MDL was created specifically to treat these practicalities.