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Comment by timschmidt

Maybe I'm just a filthy computationalist, but the way I see it, the most accurate model of the universe is the one which makes the most accurate predictions with the fewest parameters.

The Newtonian model makes provably less accurate predictions than Einsteinian (yes, I'm using a different example), so while still useful in many contexts where accuracy is less important, the number of parameters it requires doesn't much matter when looking for the one true GUT.

My understanding, again as a filthy computationalist, is that an accurate model of the real bonafide underlying architecture of the universe will be the simplest possible way to accurately predict anything. With the word "accurately" doing all the lifting.

As always: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20...

I'm sure there are decreasingly accurate, but still useful, models all the way up the computational complexity hierarchy. Lossy compression is, precisely, using one of them.

parent timschmidt 1 year ago

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