It reminds me of one remark of Eliezer in his diavlog with Scott about the multiple world interpretation of QM. There he also said something to the effect that Occam’s razor is only about the theory, but not about the “amount of stuff”.
I think that was the same fallacy. When Using MDL, you have to give a short description for your actual observation history, or at least give an upper bound for the compressed length. In multiple world theories these bounds can become very nontrivial, and the observations can easily dominate the description length, therefore Occam’s razor cannot be applied without thorough quantitative analysis.
Of course, in that special context it was true that a random state-reduction is not better than a multiple world hypothesis, in fact: slightly worse. However, one should add, a deterministic (low complexity) state reduction would be far superior.
Regardless: such lighthearted remarks about the “amount of stuff” in Occam’s razor are misleading at least.
I Agree very much.
It reminds me of one remark of Eliezer in his diavlog with Scott about the multiple world interpretation of QM. There he also said something to the effect that Occam’s razor is only about the theory, but not about the “amount of stuff”.
I think that was the same fallacy. When Using MDL, you have to give a short description for your actual observation history, or at least give an upper bound for the compressed length. In multiple world theories these bounds can become very nontrivial, and the observations can easily dominate the description length, therefore Occam’s razor cannot be applied without thorough quantitative analysis.
Of course, in that special context it was true that a random state-reduction is not better than a multiple world hypothesis, in fact: slightly worse. However, one should add, a deterministic (low complexity) state reduction would be far superior.
Regardless: such lighthearted remarks about the “amount of stuff” in Occam’s razor are misleading at least.