All of that is quite true and is directly attributable to institutional opposition to doing model selection with the algorithmic information criterion. "Opposition" as opposed to mere ignorance? There is a point when, in the course of forensics, one must cease attributing to stupidity or even malice that which can be explained by unenlightened self-interest.
On Mon, Dec 22, 2025 at 1:38 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> wrote: > We establish causation by controlled experiments. If you want to test if X > causes Y, then you vary X and observe Y while keeping everything else > the same. The two problems with analyzing data sets by compression are that > the other conditions are not all the same and that there may be conditions > that affect Y that are not in the data set. > > We do not know why the US has had an epidemic of obesity and diabetes > since the 1980's. First we were told to avoid fats. Then we were told to > avoid carbs. Neither worked. Could it be because fewer people smoke? In > China and Eastern Europe, everyone smokes and nobody is overweight. Doesn't > nicotine suppress appetite? Or maybe it's something else. What does your > data set say? > > We do not know why skin cancer rates have been rising since the 1980s, > about the time that sunscreens were introduced. Could sunscreens cause > cancer (by increasing exposure to UVA and total UV by blocking the tanning > effect of UVB)? I don't think that dermatologists would deliberately lie to > us. All the research is public. What does your data set say? > > Ray Kurzweil was at one point taking 100 life extension supplements at a > cost of $1 million per year so he could live to see the singularity at 100 > and become immortal. But there are exactly zero supplements shown to extend > life. How would you test them? Randomly assign babies to take either an > experimental drug or a placebo every day of their lives and wait 75 years? > It's now illegal to do these tests even on chimpanzees, and other primates > are next. > > And why are we still debating adding fluoride to drinking water after 70 > years? Why are we still debating vaccine safety? I suppose there is no help > for people who prefer to get their data from right wing conspiracy videos > on YouTube than from algorithmic information theory. But that's an AI > problem too. We train AI to tell us what we want to hear, and it obliges. > > So yeah, I agree it can be done, but there are a lot of practical > obstacles. > > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > > On Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 5:54 PM James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On Sun, Dec 21, 2025 at 3:59 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> On Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 3:05 PM James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> We're almost there, again, Matt. Ask not what I would do with this >>>> information, ask why we don't have this information in the first place. >>>> >>> >>> Because the information we want is causation, and compression only tells >>> you about correlation. >>> >> >> Every high school physics student knows that even systems as simple >> 3-body gravitational interaction cannot be described by correlation. It >> requires going beyond Shannon or Rissannen or any other noise from the >> statistics world. It requires feedback. Although some might claim that >> all it requires in a discrete and finite universe is a finite state >> machine, not a UTM, it does at least require that much. >> >> There's a lot of work going on in the area of dynamical systems >> identification from measurement data. >> >> But I hear you about "you can't know what causes what". This is *always* >> the argument trotted out when people in power stop losing their ability to >> impose their theories of causality on others and start being challenged by >> scientists. >> >> Back in the days of the 30 Years War it was all about which theocracy's >> "miracles" were permitted to vitiate causal laws. Nowadays, it may not be >> so much about "miracles" as simple truth claims about the futility of >> resistance to impersonal forces that are completely impervious to agency. >> People in power and those who identify with them like to trot that one out >> whenever there is an argument about policy interventions. >> >> Like I said, we're there again only on a global scale with powers that >> dwarf those available at the dawn of artillery. I'd really like to avoid >> having to go through that again. >> >> >> >>> >>> We can easily compress a table of global statistics to find a negative >>> correlation between economic development and fertility. But that doesn't >>> say which causes the other. >>> >>> The problem with using AI is that people upvote answers they agree with, >>> rather than the correct answers. I'm not ready to outsource my brain yet. >>> >>>> >>>> *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + > delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> > Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T6cf3be509c7cd2f2-M73835b4eb85bc92c0aa4603f> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T6cf3be509c7cd2f2-Mba642b27d19097d1a83d9c00 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
