What’s wrong with admitting you can’t produce such sentence?
Note, I’m not saying there isn’t one, Kolmogorov complexity and all, only that chances are extremely low that any human now can produce it.
As for Feynman statement, yeah, it’s wrong if you read it literally (I read it as “I can’t emphasize enough how important this following fact is”) , but Eliezer (and all commenters I read) made the same mistake really—he produced the sentence he thought would help them most, not one that would “contain most information in the fewest words”.
If we want to produce a sentence of highest compression, they probably won’t be able to read it for ages, so what’s the point.
If we want to produce a sentence that would help them most I have no idea what should it be. Maybe some math, maybe physics, maybe agriculture or economics. Depends on the cataclysm too. Either way, I have no idea.
I think the only thing the answers given so far convey is biases in people giving them ;-)
Actually, the sentence of highest compression contains direction, rather than information. The world already contains that information, all you need is a pointer to it.
All information is direction. Pointers are just a form of compression. Telling someone where to find a book in the Library of Babel is equivalent to compressing the contents of the book (probably not in a very efficient way).
Not necessarily. If you want to “cheat” the limitations, the thing to do is not to compress your thoughts down in a way that cannot be read for ages, but rather write one giant run-on sentence that lasts for pages and pages. That is to say, a good munchkin would realize that there is no word limit, just a sentence limit, and would exploit that loophole ruthlessly.
Edit: I now see that Mestroyer had this exact same idea here.
What’s wrong with admitting you can’t produce such sentence? Note, I’m not saying there isn’t one, Kolmogorov complexity and all, only that chances are extremely low that any human now can produce it.
As for Feynman statement, yeah, it’s wrong if you read it literally (I read it as “I can’t emphasize enough how important this following fact is”) , but Eliezer (and all commenters I read) made the same mistake really—he produced the sentence he thought would help them most, not one that would “contain most information in the fewest words”.
If we want to produce a sentence of highest compression, they probably won’t be able to read it for ages, so what’s the point. If we want to produce a sentence that would help them most I have no idea what should it be. Maybe some math, maybe physics, maybe agriculture or economics. Depends on the cataclysm too. Either way, I have no idea. I think the only thing the answers given so far convey is biases in people giving them ;-)
Actually, the sentence of highest compression contains direction, rather than information. The world already contains that information, all you need is a pointer to it.
All information is direction. Pointers are just a form of compression. Telling someone where to find a book in the Library of Babel is equivalent to compressing the contents of the book (probably not in a very efficient way).
That’s a semantic argument.
Not necessarily. If you want to “cheat” the limitations, the thing to do is not to compress your thoughts down in a way that cannot be read for ages, but rather write one giant run-on sentence that lasts for pages and pages. That is to say, a good munchkin would realize that there is no word limit, just a sentence limit, and would exploit that loophole ruthlessly.
Edit: I now see that Mestroyer had this exact same idea here.