Response to no-free-lunch discussion

[Barak Pearlmutter]

Reviewing the theory of Kolmogorov complexity, we see that not having
low Kolmogorov complexity is equivalent to being random.  In other
words, the minimal description of anything that does not have low
Kolmogorov complexity is "nothing but noise."

When you write this

	We have *no* a priori reason to believe that targets with "low
	Kolmogorov complexity" (or anything else) are/not likely to
	occur in the real world.

it is precisely equivalent to saying

	We have *no* a priori reason to believe that targets with any
	non-random structure whatsoever are likely to occur in the
	real world.

The NFL theory shows conclusively that there are no search algorithms
which are particularly good at finding minima of such random
functions.

However, as scientists, we have had some success by positing the
existence of non-random structure in the real world.  So it seems to
me that there is at least some reason to believe that the functions we
optimize in practice are not completely random, in this Kolmogorov
complexity sense.