Mind · Inference

ModelAsCompression#265d

A model represents a process in fewer computational steps than the process itself

Mechanism

A model is anything that represents a process in fewer computational steps than the process takes. It is judged on two metrics: effectiveness, how accurately it reaches its goal, and efficiency, how many steps it saves relative to the process. Where ComputationalIrreducibility holds, an accurate model saves no steps. Understanding is tracing a shorter path from A to B in information space, and intelligence is this compression. The reductive tradition of EquationReduction is compression by design.

Invariants

  • A model that takes as many steps as the process is maximally inefficient, however accurate
  • Effectiveness and efficiency are evaluated separately
  • Compression discards information, and the discarded part cannot be chosen with certainty in advance

Failure modes

  • Judging a model on accuracy alone and ignoring what it costs to run
  • Assuming a compressed description exists for a process under ComputationalIrreducibility
  • Lost-in-reduction: the discarded information was the information that mattered

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:ModelAsCompression#mh:SHA-256:265d6bf16579e276ca74ec7f344c57e683d83d7df896794529a96d088ed2e54f
Reference
ModelAsCompression#265d
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