3 ms·
The thing that frustrates me about this argument is that there is no shortest program that produces pi. You need a computer to run it, which is massive non comp
by hyperhello 3mo ago
The thing that frustrates me about this argument is that there is no shortest program that produces pi. You need a computer to run it, which is massive non compressed data, or a human to calculate stuff, an uncountable amount of entropy.
I see that the irrational pi has a smooth distribution of digits and a file full of zeroes is compressible, but they are both sort of magically part of a world that does not run programs and thus not quite different in a practical sense.
Just my thoughts and sorry for the confusion.
- pcael 3mo agoI think that does not hold, Kolmogorov complexity is measured relative to a pre-defined universal machine for everything. The machine is not counted in the description of π, for the same reason a book's length isn't measured by including the size of the reader. You fix one interpreter, then ask "how long is the shortest input that makes something?" The interpreter is a constant — the same constant for π, for the random file, for every string in the post
- grammarxcore 3mo agoSure, but spigot is a library, not the interpreter. The author’s program is short because it hides that.