Daniel C

A sum­mary of Con­den­sa­tion and its re­la­tion to Nat­u­ral Latents

• Daniel C 11 Jan 2026 14:41 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: Daniel C’s Shortform

  Preserving mutual information terms $⟹$ ( Stochastic $⟹$ Deterministic Natural latent)

  
  (See this post for background about the stochastic $\to$ deterministic natural latent conjecture)

  We’ve shown that given fixed $H\left(\Lambda \right)$, both the redundancy and mediation errors of a latent $\Lambda$ are minimized when ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i,\Lambda )$ is maximized, while $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ is exactly the parameter the determines the tradeoff between redundancy and mediation errors (among pareto-optimal latent). We’ll discuss how this could open up new angles of attack for the stochastic $\to$ deterministic natural latent conjecture.

  Suppose that we have a stochastic natural latent $\Lambda$ that satisfies:

  $I(X_2;\Lambda |X_1)\le ϵ$

  $I(X_1;\Lambda |X_2)\le ϵ$

  $TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)=I(X_1;X_2|\Lambda )\le ϵ$

  From our result, we know that to construct a deterministic natural latent ${\Lambda }^{\prime }$, all we have to do is to determine the entropy $H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }\right)$ and then select the latent that maximizes ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i,{\Lambda }^{\prime })$. The latter ensures that the latent is pareto-optimal w.r.t the mediation and determinism conditions, while the former selects a particular point on the pareto-frontier.

  Now suppose that our stochastic natural latent has a particular amount of mutual information with the joint observables $I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )$. If the stochastic natural latent was a deterministic function of the observables, then we would have:

  $H\left(\Lambda \right)=I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )$ (as that would imply $H(\Lambda |X_1,X_2)=H\left(\Lambda \right)-I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )=0$)

  So one heuristic for constructing a deterministic natural latent is to just set $H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }\right)=I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )$ and maximize ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i,{\Lambda }^{\prime })$ given the entropy constraint (so that ${\Lambda }^{\prime }$ hopefully captures all the mutual info between $\Lambda$ and $X$). We will show that if ${\Lambda }^{\prime }$ preserves the mutual information with each observable (i.e. $I(X_i;{\Lambda }^{\prime })=I(X_i;\Lambda ),i=1,2$), then the mediation condition is conserved and the stochastic redundancy conditions implies the deterministic redundancy conditions

  Preserving mutual information terms $⟹$ Mediation is conserved

  Note that the mediation error is $TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)={\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)-H\left(X|\Lambda \right)={\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i\right)-I(X_i;\Lambda )-H\left(X\right)+I(X;\Lambda )$

  Since all $H\left(X_i\right)$ and $H\left(X\right)$ terms are fixed relative to $\Lambda$, the mediation error is completely unchanged if we replace $\Lambda$ with a deterministic latent ${\Lambda }^{\prime }$ that satisfies $I(X;{\Lambda }^{\prime })=H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }\right)=I(X;\Lambda )$ and $I(X_i;{\Lambda }^{\prime })=I(X_i,\Lambda )$ for each $i$.

  Preserving mutual information terms $⟹$ Redundancy is conserved

  Note that using partial information decomposition^[1], we can decompose the stochastic redundancy errors as the following:

  $I(X_1;\Lambda |X_2)=\text{Syn}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )+\text{Uniq}(X_1;\Lambda )<ϵ⟹\text{Uniq}(X_1;\Lambda )<ϵ$

  $I(X_2;\Lambda |X_1)=\text{Syn}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )+\text{Uniq}(X_2;\Lambda )<ϵ⟹\text{Uniq}(X_2;\Lambda )<ϵ$

  where $\text{Syn}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )$ represents synergistic information of $X_2$ and $\Lambda$ w.r.t $\Lambda$ while $\text{Uniq}(X_1;\Lambda )$ represents unique information of $X_1$ w.r.t $\Lambda$. Intuitively, $I(X_1;\Lambda |X_2)$ represents the information that $X_1$ has about $\Lambda$ when we have access to $X_2$, which should include unique information that we can only derive from $X_1$ but not $X_2$, but also synergistic information that we can only derive when we have both $X_1$ and $X_2$.

  We also have:

  $I(X_1;\Lambda )=\text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )+\text{Uniq}(X_1;\Lambda )$

  $I(X_2;\Lambda )=\text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )+\text{Uniq}(X_2;\Lambda )$

  Intuitively, this is because $I(X_1;\Lambda )$ contains both the unique information about $\Lambda$ that you can only derive from $X_1$ but not $X_2$, and also the redundant information that you can derive from either $X_1$ or $X_2$. Note that since$0\le \text{Uniq}(X_1;\Lambda )\le ϵ$ and $0\le \text{Uniq}(X_2;\Lambda )\le ϵ$, we have

  $\text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )\le I(X_1;\Lambda )\le \text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )+ϵ$

  $\text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )\le I(X_2;\Lambda )\le \text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )+ϵ$

  Similarly, we have:

  $I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )=\text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )+\text{Uniq}(X_1;\Lambda )+\text{Uniq}(X_2;\Lambda )+\text{Syn}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )$

  where

  $\text{Uniq}(X_1;\Lambda )+\text{Uniq}(X_2;\Lambda )+\text{Syn}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )\le 2ϵ⟹\text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )\le I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )\le \text{Red}(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )+2ϵ$

  As a result, both $I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )-I(X_1;\Lambda )$ and $I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )-I(X_2;\Lambda )$ are bounded by $2ϵ$. This means that if we can find a deterministic latent ${\Lambda }^{\prime }$ that conserves all the relevant mutual information terms $I(X_1,X_2;|\Lambda )$, $I(X_1;|\Lambda )$ and $I(X_2;|\Lambda )$, then we can bound the deterministic redundancy errors:

  $H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }|X_1\right)=H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }\right)-I(X_1;{\Lambda }^{\prime })=I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )-I(X_1;\Lambda )<2ϵ$$H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }|X_2\right)=H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }\right)-I(X_2;{\Lambda }^{\prime })=I(X_1,X_2;\Lambda )-I(X_2;\Lambda )<2ϵ$

  Conclusion

  We’ve shown that a sufficient condition for mediation and redundancy to transfer from the stochastic to deterministic case is if the deterministic latent preserves the mutual information of the stochastic latent with both the joint observable $X$ as well as the individual observables $X_1$ and $X_2$. Given this, the remaining task would be to prove that such a deterministic latent always exists, or that it can preserve the mutual information terms up to some small error. In particular, if existence is guaranteed, then a tractable way to find the deterministic latent ${\Lambda }^{\prime }$ given a stochastic latent $\Lambda$ is to just set $H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }\right)=I(X;\Lambda )$ and maximize ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;{\Lambda }^{\prime })$

  1. ^

     Note that PID depends on a choice of redundancy measure, but our proof holds for any choice that guarantees non-negativity of PID atoms

• Daniel C 30 Dec 2025 15:27 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Daniel C’s Shortform

  Maximum redund=Maximal redund, Minimum mediator=Minimal mediator, & Naturality=Shrinking regimes of tradeoffs

  Previously, we’ve shown that given constraints on the entropy of a natural latent variable $\Lambda$, the mediation and redundancy errors are minimized exactly when the sum of mutual information with observables ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$ is maximized. In addition, the entropy $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ of the latent variable is exactly the parameter that represents the tradeoff between the mediation and redundancy condition. In particular, the mediation error can only reduce with $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ while the redundancy errors can only increase with $H\left(\Lambda \right)$.

  However, there may be regimes where changes in $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ can reduce the mediation error without increasing the redundancy errors or vice versa. For instance:

  • If we gradually increase $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ while perfectly preserving the redundancy conditions $H\left(\Lambda |X_i\right)=0,\forall i$, then we can reduce the mediation error (as it can only reduce with increasing $H\left(\Lambda \right)$) without increasing the redundancy errors (as they stay 0). Increasing $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ therefore becomes a weak pareto-improvement over the naturality conditions

  • Similarly, if we gradually reduce $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ while perfectly preserving the mediation condition $TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)=0$, then we can reduce the redundancy errors without increasing the mediation error (as it stays 0)

  If we define a maximum redund ${\Lambda }_{\ast }$ as a latent variable that satisfies the redundancy conditions $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }|X_i\right)=0$ and has the maximum entropy among redunds, then $H\left(\Lambda \right)\le H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)$ represents the regime where we can increase $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ without increasing the redundancy errors, since increasing $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ beyond $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)$ would necessarily violate the redundancy condition given our assumption of maximum entropy

  Similarly, define a minimum mediator ${\Lambda }^{\ast }$ as a mediator with minimal entropy (among mediators). Then $H\left(\Lambda \right)\ge H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$ represents the regime where we can reduce entropy without increasing the mediation error, since reducing $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ below $H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$ necessarily violates the mediation condition.

  Combining these ideas, $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)\le H\left(\Lambda \right)\le H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$ represents the regime where changing $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ actually presents a tradeoff between the mediation and redundancy errors; the minimum mediator and maximum redund marks the boundaries for when weak pareto-improvements are possible.

  Maximal redunds and minimal mediators

  In natural latents we care about the uniqueness of latent variables, which is why we have concepts like minimal mediators and maximal redunds:

  • A minimal mediator is a mediator $\Lambda$ such that for any other mediator ${\Lambda }^{\prime }$ we have $H\left(\Lambda |{\Lambda }^{\prime }\right)<ϵ$. So a minimal mediator is an approximately deterministic function of any other mediator

  • A maximal redund is a redund $\Lambda$ such that for any other redund ${\Lambda }^{\prime }$ we have $H\left({\Lambda }^{\prime }|\Lambda \right)<ϵ$. So any redund is approximately a deterministic function of the maximal redund

  Through a universal-property-flavored proof, we can show approximate isomorphism among any pair of minimal mediators $X,Y$: Since $X$ is a minimal mediator and $Y$ is a mediator, $Y$ approximately determines $X$, and using a similar argument we conclude $X$ determines $Y$. The same reasoning also allows us to derive uniqueness of any pair of maximal redunds. Naturality occurs when the maximal redund converge with the minimal mediator.

  However, note that the concepts of minimal mediators and maximal redunds are at least conceptually distinct from minimum mediators and maximum redunds. We shall therefore prove that these concepts are mathematically equivalent. This can be useful because it’s much easier to find minimum mediators and maximum redunds computationally, but we ultimately care about the unqiueness property offered by minimal mediators and maximal redunds, proving an equivalence enables the former to have the uniqueness guarantees of the latter.

  Minimum mediator = Minimal mediator (when minimal mediator exists)

  Proof:

  • Let $Y$ be a minimal mediator and $Z$ be a minimum mediator

  • Since $Y$ is a minimal mediator and $Z$ is a mediator, we have $H\left(Y|Z\right)<ϵ$ which means $I(Y;Z)\ge H\left(Y\right)-ϵ$

  • $H\left(Z|Y\right)=H\left(Z\right)-I(Z;Y)\le H\left(Z\right)-H\left(Y\right)+ϵ$

  • Since $Z$ has minimal entropy, we have $H\left(Z\right)-H\left(Y\right)<0$ which means $H\left(Z|Y\right)<ϵ$

  • For any other latent $\Lambda$, we have $H\left(Z|\Lambda \right)\le H\left(Z|Y\right)+H\left(Y|\Lambda \right)<2ϵ$, which means $Z$ is also a minimal mediator (up to error $2ϵ$)

  In addition, we have $H\left(Y\right)\le H(Y,Z)=H\left(Z\right)+H\left(Y|Z\right)\le H\left(Z\right)+ϵ$ so $Y$ is also an approximate minimum mediator

  Maximum redund= Maximal redund

  Proof:

  • Suppose that $Z$ is maximum redund of $X_1\dots X_n$ and $Y$ is any other redund

  • $(Z,Y)$ is a redund since both $Z$ and $Y$ are deterministic functions of any $X_i$, since $Z$ is maximum redund we have $H\left(Z\right)\ge H(Z,Y)$

  • $H(Z,Y)=H\left(Z\right)+H\left(Y|Z\right)$ hence we have $H\left(Z\right)\ge H\left(Z\right)+H\left(Y|Z\right)$. Since $H\left(Y|Z\right)$ is nonegative, we must have $H\left(Y|Z\right)=0$

  • As a result, $H\left(Z\right)$ is also a maximal redund

  Similarly, suppose that $Y$ is a maximal redund, then $H\left(Z\right)\le H(Z,Y)=H\left(Y\right)+H\left(Z|Y\right)\le H\left(Y\right)+ϵ$, which means $H\left(Y\right)\ge H\left(Z\right)-ϵ$ and $Y$ is also an approximate maximum redund.

  Naturality as shrinking regime of tradeoffs

  Recall that $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)\le H\left(\Lambda \right)\le H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$ (where ${\Lambda }^{\ast }$ is the minimum mediator and ${\Lambda }_{\ast }$ is the maximum redund) represents the regime where changing $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ actually presents a tradeoff between the mediation and redundancy errors. Due to the equivalence we proved, we can also think of ${\Lambda }^{\ast }$ as the minimal mediator and ${\Lambda }_{\ast }$ as the maximal redund.

  We also know that naturality occurs when the minimal mediator converges with the maximal redund (as a natural latent satisfies both mediation and redundancy, and mediator determines redund); we can picture this convergence as if we’re shrinking the gap between $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)$ and $H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$. In other words, naturality occurs exactly when the regime of tradeoff ($H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)\le H\left(\Lambda \right)\le H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$) between the redundancy and mediation error is small. If we have exact naturality $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)=H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$, then pareto-improvements on the naturality conditions can always be made by nudging $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ closer to $H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$.

  Combining this with our previous result, we conclude that that maximizing ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i,\Lambda )$ represents strong pareto-improvements over the naturality conditions; $H\left(\Lambda \right)\le H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)$ and $H\left(\Lambda \right)\ge H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$ represents the regime where we can have weak pareto-improvements by nudging $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ closer to the boundary of $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)$ or $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)$; whereas $H\left({\Lambda }_{\ast }\right)\le H\left(\Lambda \right)\le H\left({\Lambda }^{\ast }\right)$ represents the regime of real tradeoffs between naturality conditions. An approximate natural latent exist exactly when the regime of real tradeoffs is small and we can pareto-improve towards naturality

• Daniel C 22 Dec 2025 14:46 UTC

  15 points

  0

  on: Daniel C’s Shortform

  Natural latent maximizes sum of mutual information with each observable

  Claim: Given constraints on the entropy of a latent variable $\Lambda$, the redundancy and mediation errors are optimized exactly when the sum of mutual information ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$ is maximized.

  Why is this useful?

  • Early works on natural abstractions often talk about throwing away information while maintaining predictive power, but how should predictive power be measured? If you have multiple observables, you want to maximize predictive power for each of the observables you care about. In particular, you want your latent variable to include “shared information” that allows you to predict multiple variables at once. This is similar to maximizing ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$ while minimizing $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ (as we’re trying to throw away information).

  • Maximizing the sum of mutual information is likely computationally easier than directly optimizing for the mediation and redundancy conditions, so this framing could be helpful for anyone trying to find natural latents computationally

  Mediation

  Mediation is one of the main conditions for naturality of latent variables. Intuitively, an (approximate) mediator $\Lambda$ captures (approximately) all the correlation between a collection of observables $X_1\dots X_n$. We will prove that a latent variable $\Lambda$ is an (optimal) approximate mediator $⟺$ it maximizes the sum of mutual information ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$ given constraint on entropy $H\left(\Lambda \right)\le k$
  

  Intuition: To maximize the sum of mutual information ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$, it is beneficial to include information that is shared among multiple $X_i$ in $\Lambda$ (as that would increase multiple mutual information term). A mediator is a latent variable that captures all the shared information among the $X_i$s, so it will be selected for when maximizing ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$.

  Proof:

  1. Note that the mediation error of $\Lambda$ is equivelant to the conditional total correlation $TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)=D_{KL}\left(P\right(X_1\dots X_n|\Lambda )\parallel P(X_1|\Lambda )\dots P(X_n|\Lambda \left)\right)$

  2. We have ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )={\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i\right)-H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)$, since each $H\left(X_i\right)$ term is fixed relative to $\Lambda$, maximizing the sum of mutual information is equivalent to minimizing the sum of conditional entropies ${\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)$

  3. We have $D_{KL}\left(P\right(X_1\dots X_n|\Lambda )\parallel P(X_1|\Lambda )\dots P(X_n|\Lambda \left)\right)=TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)={\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)-H\left(X|\Lambda \right)$, which means
     ${\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)=H\left(X|\Lambda \right)+TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)=H\left(X\right)-I(X;\Lambda )+TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)\ge H\left(X\right)-H\left(\Lambda \right)+TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)$. For the last inequality we used $H\left(X\right)\ge I(X;\Lambda )$, we can obtain equality if $\Lambda$ is a deterministic function of $X$.

  4. Hence, if we have a constraint on entropy $H\left(\Lambda \right)\le k$, then we have the lower bound${\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)\ge H\left(X\right)-H\left(\Lambda \right)+TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)\ge H\left(X\right)-k+TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)$.

  5. We can achieve equality on the lower bound by choosing a deterministic (w.r.t $X$) latent $\Lambda$ with entropy $H\left(\Lambda \right)=k$. For such $\Lambda$ we have ${\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)=H\left(X\right)-k+TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)$, which means ${\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)$ is minimized exactly when $TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)$ is minimized (as that’s the only term which depends on $\Lambda$)

  6. Since $TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)$ is nonnegative and equivalent to the mediation error, we conclude that ${\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)$ is minimized exactly when the mediation error is minimized, and an exact mediator ($TC\left(X|\Lambda \right)=0$) with entropy $k$ always achieves minimal ${\sum }_{i}H\left(X_i|\Lambda \right)$ (hence maximal ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$) among latent variables with entropy $\le k$

  Redundancy

  The correspondence with the redundancy condition is quite simple: The sum of the redundancy errors are ${\sum }_{i}H\left(\Lambda |X_i\right)=nH\left(\Lambda \right)-{\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$, so if we have a constraint of the form $H\left(\Lambda \right)\ge k$, then we have ${\sum }_{i}H\left(\Lambda |X_i\right)=nH\left(\Lambda \right)-{\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )\ge nk-{\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$, and the sum of redundancy errors are minimized exactly when ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$ is maximized and $H\left(\Lambda \right)=k$.

  Putting it together

  We’ve shown that given constraints on $H\left(\Lambda \right)$, both the mediation and the redundancy conditions are minimized exactly when the sum of mutual information ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i,\Lambda )$ is maximized, we can use this to simplify the search for natural latents, and while optimizing for this quantity there is no tradeoff between the redundancy and mediation errors.

  However, note that mediation error increases as $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ decreases (the mediation error for the empty latent is simply total correlation), while the redundancy error increases with $H\left(\Lambda \right)$ (which is why we imposed $H\left(\Lambda \right)\le k$ for mediation but $H\left(\Lambda \right)\ge k$ for redundancy). So the entropy of the latent is exactly the parameter that represents the tradeoff between the mediation and redundancy errors.

  In summary, we can picture a pareto-frontier of latent variables with maximal ${\sum }_{i}I(X_i;\Lambda )$ and different entropies, by ramping up the entropy of $\Lambda$ along the pareto-frontier we gradually increase the redundancy errors while reducing the mediation errors, and these are the only parameters relevant for latent variables that are pareto-optimal w.r.t the naturality conditions.

  What links here?

  • Daniel C's comment on Daniel C’s Shortform by Daniel C (11 Jan 2026 14:41 UTC; 3 points)
  • Daniel C's comment on Daniel C’s Shortform by Daniel C (30 Dec 2025 15:27 UTC; 1 point)

Daniel C’s Shortform

Ab­strac­tion as a gen­er­al­iza­tion of al­gorith­mic Markov condition

Al­gorith­mic ther­mo­dy­nam­ics and three types of op­ti­miza­tion

• Daniel C 30 Nov 2025 9:02 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: The Moon­rise Problem

  Great to see the concreteness of this example, some thoughts on the candidate properties:

  • The relationships between latent variables can change under ontology shifts, but we still want the semantics of our latent variables to remain invariant in some sense. This means we need some other variables tracking the relationships between our latent variables, & we’d update on those variables during ontology shifts. Latent variables are partly selected on the criterion that they can adapt to these changes in relationships while still maintaining the correspondence principle.

  • There’s a problem of whether we want to think of factorization/​latent variables as a stance/​frame we’re taking towards the system or an objective structural property of the system. I lean towards the former because when humans model the minds of other humans, they think of those minds as making use of similar abstractions to think & reason despite almost never observing the actual internals of human brains. The degree of freedom in the “latent variable embedding” of nuclear exchange initiation also suggests some notion of subjectivity.

  • The fact that we have to identify nuclear exchange initiation across a wide variety of scenarios points to ‘re-use’ being an important basis of convergent factorization. Loopiness comes in when our existing reusable abstractions affect what new abstractions/​models of the world we’re able to construct.

• Daniel C 19 Nov 2025 21:01 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: Richard_Ngo’s comment on: ricraz’s Shortform

  For this we need a mechanism such that the maintenance of the mechanism is a schelling point. Specifically, the mechanism at T+1 should reward agents for actions at time T that reinforce the mechanism itself (in particular the actions are distributed). The incentive raises the probability of the mechanism being actualized at T+1, which in turn raises the “weight” of the reward offered by the mechanism at T+1, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  “Merging” forces parallelism back into sequential structures, which is why most blockchains are slow. You could make it faster by bundling a lot of actions together, but you need to make sure all actions are actually observable & checked by most of the agents (aka the data availability problem)

• Daniel C 10 Nov 2025 3:15 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: Three Kinds Of On­tolog­i­cal Foundations

  For translatability guarantees, we also want an answer for why agents have distinct concepts for different things, and the criteria for carving up the world model into different concepts. My sketch of an answer is that different hypotheses/​agents will make use of different pieces of information under different scenarios, and having distinct reference handles to different types of information allows the hypotheses/​agents to access the minimal amount of information they need.

  
  For environment structure, we’d like an answer for what it means for there to be an object that persists through time, or for there to be two instances of the same object. One way this could work is to look at probabilistic predictions of an object over its Markov blanket, and require some sort of similarity in probabilistic predictions when we “transport” the object over spacetime

  
  I’m less optimistic about the mind structure foundation because the interfaces that are the most natural to look at might not correspond to what we call “human concepts”, especially when the latter requires a level of flexibility not supported by the former. For instance, human concepts have different modularity structures with each other depending on context (also known as shifting structures), which basically rules out any simple correspondence with interfaces that have fixed computational structure over time. How we want to decompose a world model is an additional degree of freedom to the world model itself, and that has to come from other ontological foundations.

• Daniel C 7 Nov 2025 3:06 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: Toward Statis­ti­cal Me­chan­ics Of In­ter­faces Un­der Selec­tion Pressure

  Seems like the main additional source of complexity is that each interface has its own local constraint, and the local constraints are coupled with each other (but lower-dimensional than parameters themselves); whereas regular statmech usually have subsystems sharing the same global constraints (different parts of a room of ideal gas are independent given the same pressure/​temperature etc)

  To recover the regular statmech picture, suppose that the local constraints have some shared/​redundant information with each other: Ideally we’d like to isolate that redundant/​shared information into a global constraint that all interfaces has access to, and we’d want the interfaces to be independent given the global constraint. For that we need something like relational completeness, where indexical information is encoded within the interfaces themselves, while the global constraint is shared across interfaces.

• Daniel C 6 Nov 2025 18:22 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Menotim’s comment on: The Zen Of Max­ent As A Gen­er­al­iza­tion Of Bayes Updates

  IIUC there are two scenarios to be distinguished:

  One is that the die has bias p unknown to you (you have some prior over p) and you use i.i.d flips to estimate bias as usual & get maxent distribution for a new draw. The draws are independent given p but not independent given your priors, so everything works out.

  The other is that the die is literally i.i.d over your priors. In this case everything from your argument routes through: Whatever bias\constraint you happen to estimate from your outcome sequence doesn’t say anything about a new i.i.d draw because they’re uncorrelated, the new draw is just another sample from your prior

• Daniel C 6 Nov 2025 14:20 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: J Bostock’s comment on: Jemist’s Shortform

  I think steering is basically learning, backwards, and maybe flipped sideways. In learning, you build up mutual information between yourself and the world; in steering, you spend that mutual information. You can have learning without steering—but not the other way around—because of the way time works.

  
  Alternatively, for learning your brain can start out in any given configuration, and it will end up in the same (small set of) final configuration (one that reflects the world); for steering the world can start out in any given configuration, and it will end up in the same set of target configurations

  It seems like some amount of steering without learning is possible (open-loop control), you can reduce entropy in a subsystem while increasing entropy elsewhere to maintain information conservation

• Daniel C 4 Nov 2025 3:02 UTC

  8 points

  0

  on: The Zen Of Max­ent As A Gen­er­al­iza­tion Of Bayes Updates

  Nice, some connections with why are maximum entropy distributions so ubiquitous:

  • If your system is ergodic, time average=ensemble average. Hence expected constraints can be estimated via following your dynamical system over time

  • If your system follows the second law, then entropy increases subject to the constraints

  So the system converges to the maxent invariant distribution subject to constraint, which is why langevin dynamics converges to the Boltzmann distribution, and you can estimate equilibrium energy by following the particle around

  In particular, we often use maxent to derive the prior itself (=invariant measure), and when our system is out of equilibrium, we can then maximize relative entropy w.r.t our maxent prior to update our distribution

• Daniel C 31 Oct 2025 10:34 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Re­sam­pling Con­serves Re­dun­dancy & Me­di­a­tion (Ap­prox­i­mately) Un­der the Jensen-Shan­non Divergence

  Congratulations!

  I would guess the issue with KL relates to the fact that a bound on $D_{KL}(P\parallel Q)$ permits situations where $P(X=x)$ is small but $Q(X=x)$ is large (as we take the expectation under $P$), whereas JS penalizes both ways.

  In particular, in the original theorem on resampling using KL divergence, the assumption bounds KL w.r.t the joint distribution $P(X,\Lambda )$, so there may be situation where the resampled probability$Q(X=x,\Lambda =\lambda )=P(X=x)P(\Lambda =\lambda |X_2=x_2)$ is large but $P(X=x,\Lambda =\lambda )$ is small. But the intended conclusion bounds the KL under the resampled distribution $Q$, so the error on the values $(X=x,\Lambda =\lambda )$ would be weighted much more under $Q$ than under $P$. Since we’re taking expectation under $Q$ for the conclusion, the bound on the other resampling error under $P$ becomes insufficient.

• Daniel C 23 Oct 2025 3:28 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Re­sam­pling Con­serves Re­dun­dancy (Ap­prox­i­mately)

  Would this still give us guarantees on the conditional distribution $P\left(X|\Lambda \right)$?

  E.g. Mediation: $D_{KL}\left(P\right(X_1,X_2,\Lambda )\parallel P(X_1|\Lambda \left)P\right(X_2|\Lambda \left)P\right(\Lambda \left)\right)$$=D_{KL}\left(P\right(X_1,X_2|\Lambda \left)P\right(\Lambda )\parallel P(X_1|\Lambda \left)P\right(X_2|\Lambda \left)P\right(\Lambda \left)\right)$$=D_{KL}\left(P\right(X_1,X_2|\Lambda )\parallel P(X_1|\Lambda \left)P\right(X_2|\Lambda \left)\right)$

  is really about the expected error conditional on individual values of $\Lambda$, & it seems like there are distributions with high mediation error but low error when the latent is marginalized inside $D_{KL}$, which could be load-bearing when the agents cast out predictions on observables after updating on $\Lambda$

• Daniel C 8 Oct 2025 18:07 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: john­swent­worth’s Shortform

  The current theory is based on classical hamiltonian mechanics, but I think the theorems apply whenever you have a markovian coarse-graining. Fermion doubling is a problem for spacetime discretization in the quantum case, so the coarse-graining might need to be different. (E.g. coarse-grain the entire hilbert space, which might have locality issues but probably not load-bearing for algorithmic thermodynamics)

  On outside view, quantum reduces to classical (which admits markovian coarse-graining) in the correspondence limit, so there must be some coarse-graining that works

• Daniel C 8 Oct 2025 3:18 UTC

  6 points

  1

  in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: john­swent­worth’s Shortform

  I also talked to Aram recently & he’s optimistic that there’s an algorithmic version of the generalized heat engine where the hot vs cold pool correspond to high vs low k-complexity strings. I’m quite interested in doing follow-up work on that

• Daniel C 8 Oct 2025 2:52 UTC

  7 points

  6

  in reply to: jbash’s comment on: john­swent­worth’s Shortform

  The continuous state-space is coarse-grained into discrete cells where the dynamics are approximately markovian (the theory is currently classical) & the “laws of physics” probably refers to the stochastic matrix that specifies the transition probabilities of the discrete cells (otherwise we could probably deal with infinite precision through limit computability)

• Daniel C 2 Oct 2025 13:02 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Thane Ruthenis’s comment on: Syn­the­siz­ing Stan­dalone World-Models, Part 1: Ab­strac­tion Hierarchies

  As in, take a set of variables X, then search for some set of its (non-overlapping?) subsets such that there’s a nontrivial natural latent over it? Right, it’s what we’re doing here as well.

  I think the subsets can actually be partially overlapping, for instance you may have a $\lambda$ that’s approximately deterministic w.r.t $\{X_1,X_2\}$ and $\{X_2,X_3\}$ but not $X_2$ alone, weak redundancy (approximately deterministic w.r.t $\left\{\overline{X_i}\right\}\forall i$) is also an example of redunds across overlapping subsets