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Author Re: Why compression?
Sachin Garg

2005-12-15, 3:55 am


niels.froehling@seies.de wrote:
> The redundancy in the way to formulate data in our world, makes
> compression
> possible, without that everything couldn't be differenciated from
> random data.


Agreed.

>
> But redundancy is a _must_ for the human way of thinking, it's like
> you


Yes agreed, infact learning is defined as a process of relating new
facts with already known facts.

But then we also have the difference between evolution and revolution.
(No I am *not* claiming that by changing the way we think, we can
compress random data.)

> That means each technology (brain/cpu) is used for what it's really
> good
> for, none can replace the other. The human has the idea, the computer
> proofs it.
>
>
> So my point was a bit sarcastic, be fast where it's needed to be fast,
> and efficient where it's needed to be efficient, no single option is
> 'optimal'.


Agreed.

>
> But that's how it should be. How can you call an effectivly
> non-terminating
> program (runs from the second second of the beginning of the universe
> to
> the second before the end, you don't have time to analyse the result)
> be
> called 'optimal'?


The program wont be optimal (in terms of time taken), but 'length' of
the program might be optimal (and that is what Kolmogorov-Complexity
talks about).

But I understand the point you are trying to make, time probably should
be a part of it. But then we have other independent measures of
time-complexity. We can maybe let kolmogrov-complexity stay the way it
is, and assign to a program its Big-Oh O( ) complexity based on the
length of output string.

Sachin Garg [India]
http://www.sachingarg.com

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