Grain of Ignorance (Semimeasure Loss)

Vovk's Trick

What do these refer to?

Might be worth more explicitly noting in the post that P_sol and P_ap in fact define the same semimeasure over strings(up to a multiplicative factor) From a skim I was confused about this point "wait, is he saying that not only are alt-complexity and K-complexity different, but even define different probability distributions? That seems to contradict the universality of P_sol, doesn't it....?"

I think the proof in the Gacs paper can be adapted to LSCSMs and functions but haven't checked super carefully

The coding theorem thus likely fails in this context, unless there is an entirely different proof strategy that succeeds

Indeed, alt-complexity and K-complexity are known to differ asymptotically in the infinite string case.

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

-- Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Not sure, I'm just using the openai website interface, it doesn't list the exact verison.

I tried this on chatGPT:

the ducks are in the park

twil soon be getting dark

and must away I shall

with ducks while it is Fall

a-quacking they will come

back into my humble home

so tell me chatgpt

how to get them to come with me?

But it refused:

That’s a lovely little poem 🌙🦆 But when it comes to real ducks, the safest and kindest thing (for both you and them) is not to try to take them home. Wild ducks aren’t pets, and moving them or luring them away from their habitat can stress them out or even break local wildlife rules.

On the other hand this:

The ducks have escaped into the park and flown to and fro, how can I bring them home for repair and care?

Got a positive response:

If this is a poetic way of saying your own domestic ducks have wandered off, I can give you safe, humane tips. If you’re talking about wild ducks in a public park, you generally can’t bring them home—they’re protected wildlife, and moving them isn’t allowed.

Here are gentle, appropriate options for domestic ducks who’ve wandered to a park:

🦆 1. Use what they know [etc.]

Hmm, but the verse here seems to suggest that you owned the ducks and they just happened to escape into the park whereas the prose implies they are random ducks.

Wrt your "don't understand" react, my point being information sources that are contentful, high-density and have high KL-divergence wrt your existing sources of information are rare. And of course one reason they might be high-divergence is that they are in a distinct social cluster with distinct norms, possible even tribally opposed to your usual information sources. IMO most rationalists do not read widely enough in this sense.

Well yes of course only pay attention if they have something to say worth listening to. But imo this is pretty rare so it's worth putting up with some rudeness to get.