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