Complexity of the universe



Kolmogrov complexity explained


Kolmogrov complexity: Gregory Chaitin came up with this same idea shortly after Kolmogrov did. You can check out his web page

Kolmogrov complexity is also known as "algorithmic information content."

The Kolmogrov description of complexity is:
What is the shortest program that will generate a specific string?

For example, the program that will generate:

"Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi H"

is much shorter than the one that will generate:

"Klm oappes jcybfjrnd fhydkba dgftjv ahsdfjj sadycjhyt adhhfhahe chcjehc jjq dtg hha klqpnz mqare foedlp sork"

For rigor, it is defined to be the shortest input string given to a universal Turing computer that will generate a given output string.

Some series will look complex that have underlying algorithmic descriptions which means they have low Kolmogrov complexity.

Anything that is describable algorithmically will have a lower complexity than something that can not, like a completely random irrational number.






To the universe complexity page
(external) another Kolmogrov explanation.

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