Speed Prior - Definition

(slightly edited from Schmidhuber's web site)

Juergen Schmidhuber's Speed Prior is a simplicity measure based on the fastest way of describing objects (rather than the shortest).

Occam's Razor says: prefer simple solutions to complex ones. But what exactly does "simple" mean? According to tradition something is simple if it has a short description or program, that is, it has low Kolmogorov complexity. This leads to Ray Solomonoff's and Leonid Levin's algorithmic probability measure which yields optimal though noncomputable predictions, given past observations.

Unlike the traditional measures, the Speed Prior leads to near-optimal computable predictions, and provokes unusual prophecies concerning the future of our universe.

External link:

• Speed Prior web site (http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/speedprior.html)