On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 5:13 PM, Matt Mahoney <matmaho...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Jim, what evidence do you have that Occam's Razor ... is wrong, besides > your own opinions? It is well established that elegant (short) theories are > preferred in all branches of science because they have greater predictive > power. > > -- Matt Mahoney, matmaho...@yahoo.com > When a heuristic is used as if it were an axiom of truth, it will interfere in the development of reasonable insight just because an heuristic is not an axiom. Now to apply this heuristic (which does have value) as an unquestionable axiom of mind, you are making a more egregious claim because you are multiplying the force of the error. Occam's razor has greater predictive power within the boundaries of the isolation experiments which have the greatest potential to enhance its power. If simplest theories are preferred because they have the greater predictive power, then it would follow that isolation experiments would be the preferred vehicles of science just because they can produce theories that had the most predictive power. Whether this is the case or not (the popular opinion), it does not answer the question of whether narrow AI (for example) should be the preferred child of computer science just because the theorems of narrow AI are so much better at predicting their (narrow) events than the theorems of AGI are at comprehending their (more complicated) events. Jim Bromer ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
