AI Foundationspredict · compress · act

concepts → Objective

Objective

Minimum description length

also called MDL

timeless3 connections

choose the explanation that lets you write the data most briefly — simplicity, measured in bits

the formal statement
cost = L(hypothesis) + L(data | hypothesis)

Where it sits

The prism has six jobs across and eight layers down. Its primary cell is learn × L0. Hatched cells cannot exist — a GPU does not learn, an institution does not infer.

What must come first — and what it unlocks

Left to right is reading order, derived from the prerequisite_of edges. Nothing here is hand-ordered: the diagram is the graph.

Occam's razorMinimum description lengthnothing depends on it yet — a leaf in the reading order

Before it: Occam's razor

Where to read it

The chapter that introduces it, and any chapter that uses it again.

14The Shortest Explanationact IV · The Learning Floor

Where it comes from

Every connection

All 3 edges touching this node, grouped by relation family — the sections above are highlights from this list. Colours match the relation families inthe atlas.

Order · 1
requiresOccam's razorHeuristic
Flow · 2
is optimised byHuffman codingAlgorithm

This page is a projection of one node in src/data/concepts.ts. It has no prose file of its own — 521 declared edges produce all 340 of these pages. Edit an edge and both endpoints change.