Solomonoff induction is optimal for, given an initial portion of a computable bitstring, predicting the rest of (or the next portion of) the bitstring.

Logical induction (my apologies for referring to “probabilistic induction”; I was speaking unclearly when I did so. What I meant to communicate by that phrase was “if you attempt to do Bayesian updating on math statements in a naive ‘just apply Bayes’ rule’ way”, as an example of something that doesn’t work) on the other hand, will assign probabilities to different statements, which it updates over time, and these different probabilities aren’t for mutually exclusive events, unlike with solomonoff induction.

Now, I don’t mean that if you had an oracle for solomonoff induction, that you couldn’t make a program using that oracle to produce something much more powerful than logical induction.

And I’m also certainly not saying that the algorithm found for logical induction is the fastest one for the problem it solves. If it was (at least, if it was for small amounts of time? Perhaps it could be asymptotically optimal for large amounts of time), I think it would be strong evidence that the human mind is special with respect to estimating the plausibility of mathematical statements! (The algorithm is very slow).

But, I do think that it is quite probably better at that task than straightforward applications of computable approximations of solomonoff induction.
(Like computable approximations to solomonoff induction, logical induction also goes through an enumeration of all possible programs and eventually tries each one of them.)

By the way, this thread is getting to the point where I have to click your specific reply in order to get to the reply link; do you want to move this to email or discord or something? Totally fine if you want to keep it here of course, just wanted to offer the option.

Also, I need to read up on the thing you mentioned on randomness conservation. Sounds interesting. Sorry for not having gotten to that yet.

I’m confused by what you mean by “implies the existence of halting oracles”. Do you just mean as abstract objects? (in which case, yes, I completely agree that halting oracles exist as abstract objects. There is a fact of the matter as to whether any particular Turing machine halts, and so there is a function from Turing machines to whether the input Turing machine halts on an empty tape. Similarly for halting oracles for Turing machines which themselves have a lower halting oracle.)
Or do you mean that they exist or might exist as physically implemented (err, not sure “physically” is exactly the word I mean. Like, if human souls are the only things in/“in” the universe that can solve the halting problem, I don’t think I’d call that “physically implemented”, but I don’t mean to exclude this option) things?

I’m currently skeptical of the latter, but that is approximately the question we are discussing, so maybe I’m wrong.

Are you saying that, you think it plausible that humans can (in a sense) compress strings in ways that Turing machines cannot, (or that a Turing machine with access to a human / to humans, can compress strings better than a Turing machine can alone), and that, if true, that would be evidence for humans containing/having-access-to halting oracles?

If that is what you mean (and my apologies if I’ve misunderstood you), I do agree that this would be evidence for that, yes (though I’m, of course, less convinced that access to humans as an oracle would allow a TM to compress strings better.).

[fifth letter of toboggan]mail btw: Madaco dot madaco

Edit: have started to read the Leonid Levin paper “randomness conservation inequalities” now. Quite interesting so far.