“In general, the shorter the possible representation… the less random… On this view we recognize science to be the search for algorithmic compressions.”

— John D. Barrow

New Theories of Everything (2007)
Context: We say that the string is 'random' if there is no other representation of the string which is shorter than itself. But we will say that it is 'non-random' if there does exist such an abbreviated representation.... In general, the shorter the possible representation... the less random... On this view we recognize science to be the search for algorithmic compressions.<!--Ch. 1, p. 11

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John D. Barrow58

British scientist 1952–2020

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