Mind · Reasoning

BoundedModelOpenWorld#a334

Complexity is the gap between a bounded model and an open world, and it does not close

Mechanism

Every ModelAsCompression is bounded by resources and by what it incorporated when it was built. The world it models is open: exogenous effects arise from what the model never included, and a model cannot fully account for itself. Complexity names this gap. ComputationalIrreducibility, observer effects and reflexivity hold it open. Every model therefore carries a valid-until date, and the practical question is how a system detects that its model has expired.

Invariants

  • Complexity is a relation between a model and its world, not a property of the world alone
  • The gap cannot be closed, only managed
  • Every model has a valid-until date, whether or not it is known

Failure modes

  • Turkey problem: a model fits every available data point and is catastrophically wrong, because the relevant information lies outside the agent's position in information space
  • Confusing complicated with complex, and treating a hard but closed problem as open
  • Spending effort to close the gap instead of detecting when the ModelAsCompression has expired

Where this came from

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Identity

The name is the hash of the definition. Change a word and it becomes a different pattern.

Sema ID
sema:BoundedModelOpenWorld#mh:SHA-256:a33485666a4c67900ff103d12c3629590481489d73350ebc122bc15bb5419661
Reference
BoundedModelOpenWorld#a334
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