English

A Dilemma for Solomonoff Prediction

Artificial Intelligence 2022-06-15 v1 Statistics Theory Statistics Theory

Abstract

The framework of Solomonoff prediction assigns prior probability to hypotheses inversely proportional to their Kolmogorov complexity. There are two well-known problems. First, the Solomonoff prior is relative to a choice of Universal Turing machine. Second, the Solomonoff prior is not computable. However, there are responses to both problems. Different Solomonoff priors converge with more and more data. Further, there are computable approximations to the Solomonoff prior. I argue that there is a tension between these two responses. This is because computable approximations to Solomonoff prediction do not always converge.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2206.06473,
  title  = {A Dilemma for Solomonoff Prediction},
  author = {Sven Neth},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.06473},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

25 pages. Forthcoming in Philosophy of Science

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:49:53.330Z