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Re: [ontolog-forum] Axiomatic ontology

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 12:59:39 -0500
Message-id: <47ADEA0B.2050307@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Pat,    (01)

I agree with the following statement:    (02)

 > The definition of a random sequence is that no matter how much
 > of it you have, there is no way even in principle to compute
 > any information about the next item.    (03)

I also agree with the following statement, but I would qualify it:    (04)

 > This is why their information capacity is as high as it can get,
 > because you can't compress them into a smaller package.    (05)

You can, of course, do superficial compression.  For example, you
might get a random string of 1000 alphabetic characters stored in
1000 bytes.  But if they only use 26 letters, the string could be
compressed by a factor of log2(26)/8.    (06)

 > But this also means that you can't in any sense parse them.    (07)

In our work with graphs, we often generate random graphs (actually
the usual pseudo-random stuff you get on digital computers).  But
we can parse common computer representations of graphs, even random
graphs, to generate a much more compact representation.    (08)

But that isn't violating the following principle, which I agree with:    (09)

 > you can't find any structure in them to utilize to say something
 > about something else.    (010)

John    (011)


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