Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Majromax 63 days ago
The math doesn't need a 'true' or 'false' distribution; that just falls out of the use of a model ('false') to approximate reality ('true'). When the bard says "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," he's also saying that the KL Divergence between Horatio's beliefs and reality is infinite.

We can also apply the concept between two subjective distributions. If I'm indifferent to sports teams (very broad distribution) and you're a rabid fan of A (sharp, narrow distribution), then it might take you a long time to express a point in a way I'll understand – but conversely I might be able to express "team B is good actually" in a way that just does not compute for you.

1 comments

> The math doesn't need a 'true' or 'false' distribution; that just falls out of the use of a model ('false') to approximate reality ('true').

Looks like a contradiction. If you identify reality with a probability distribution (rather than just plain facts), then that requires a "true" objective probability distribution.

> If I'm indifferent to sports teams (very broad distribution) and you're a rabid fan of A (sharp, narrow distribution), then it might take you a long time to express a point in a way I'll understand – but conversely I might be able to express "team B is good actually" in a way that just does not compute for you.

That sounds far too vague for me.