The code of the compressor counts against your message length if you didn’t pick the compressor before seeing the message. (In standard epistemology about compression and simplicity priors. See eg Minimum Message Length.)
It’s still true that a posteriori you can compress random files. For example, if I randomly get the file “all zeros”, it’s a very compressible file, even if I have to write the program.
It’s just that on average a priori you can’t do better than just writing out the file.
In context, I guess your claim is: “if the ‘compressor’ is post-hoc trying a bunch of algorithms and picking the best one, the full complexity of that process should count against the compressor.” Totally agree with that as far as epistemology is concerned!
But I don’t think the epistemological point carries over to the realm of rational-fic.
In part that’s because I think of JKR-magic as in fact having a bunch of structure that makes it much easier to explain than it would be to explain a truly randomly-generated set of spells and effects (e.g. the pseudo-Latin stuff; the fact that wands are typically used). So I expect an retrofitted explanation wouldn’t be crazy tortured (wouldn’t require having a compression process that tests a ridiculous number N of patterns, or incorporates a ridiculous amount of fiat random bits).
In part I’m just making a tedious “nerds have different aesthetic intuitions about stuff” point, where I think a reasonably simple well-retrofitted explanation is aesthetically very cool even if it’s clearly not the actual thing used to generate the system (and maybe required a bunch of search to find).
The code of the compressor counts against your message length if you didn’t pick the compressor before seeing the message. (In standard epistemology about compression and simplicity priors. See eg Minimum Message Length.)
It’s still true that a posteriori you can compress random files. For example, if I randomly get the file “all zeros”, it’s a very compressible file, even if I have to write the program.
It’s just that on average a priori you can’t do better than just writing out the file.
In context, I guess your claim is: “if the ‘compressor’ is post-hoc trying a bunch of algorithms and picking the best one, the full complexity of that process should count against the compressor.” Totally agree with that as far as epistemology is concerned!
But I don’t think the epistemological point carries over to the realm of rational-fic.
In part that’s because I think of JKR-magic as in fact having a bunch of structure that makes it much easier to explain than it would be to explain a truly randomly-generated set of spells and effects (e.g. the pseudo-Latin stuff; the fact that wands are typically used). So I expect an retrofitted explanation wouldn’t be crazy tortured (wouldn’t require having a compression process that tests a ridiculous number N of patterns, or incorporates a ridiculous amount of fiat random bits).
In part I’m just making a tedious “nerds have different aesthetic intuitions about stuff” point, where I think a reasonably simple well-retrofitted explanation is aesthetically very cool even if it’s clearly not the actual thing used to generate the system (and maybe required a bunch of search to find).