Conversation

Every science is a degenerate habit of thought. Magical thinking is the creative discipline of resisting the lure of that degeneracy. The best way to do that is to convince yourself that science has a general method to it. Methodicity is actually the mark of magical thinking.
6
50
Replying to
As in math. 3 points in a straight line is technically a degenerate triangle. In one sense, the simplest kind of triangle. Occam’s razor is an example of a degeneracy test.
1
6
Replying to and
More generally compression as a measure of explanatory correctness is at odds with a methodological characterization of science. There’s in fact a result (google Chaitin’s omega) that suggests the whether an algorithm explaining some data is the most “elegant” is undecidable
1
4
Replying to
No, I’m saying almost the exact opposite. Optimization is a dangerous metaphor to use in computability theory though. The underlying space is not well-behaved enough. I would not try to understand this idea in optimization terms.
1
3