A Theory of the Mechanics of Information: Generalization Through Measurement of Uncertainty (Learning is Measuring)

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22809v1
• Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2025 19:45:25 GMT
• Title: A Theory of the Mechanics of Information: Generalization Through Measurement of Uncertainty (Learning is Measuring)
• Authors: Christopher J. Hazard, Michael Resnick, Jacob Beel, Jack Xia, Cade Mack, Dominic Glennie, Matthew Fulp, David Maze, Andrew Bassett, Martin Koistinen,
• Abstract summary: We introduce a model-free framework using surprisal (information theoretic uncertainty) to analyze and perform inferences from raw data.<n>It eliminates distribution modeling, reducing bias, and enabling efficient updates including direct edits and deletion of training data.<n>It emphasizes traceability, interpretability, and data-driven decision making, offering a unified, human-understandable framework for machine learning.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: Traditional machine learning relies on explicit models and domain assumptions, limiting flexibility and interpretability. We introduce a model-free framework using surprisal (information theoretic uncertainty) to directly analyze and perform inferences from raw data, eliminating distribution modeling, reducing bias, and enabling efficient updates including direct edits and deletion of training data. By quantifying relevance through uncertainty, the approach enables generalizable inference across tasks including generative inference, causal discovery, anomaly detection, and time series forecasting. It emphasizes traceability, interpretability, and data-driven decision making, offering a unified, human-understandable framework for machine learning, and achieves at or near state-of-the-art performance across most common machine learning tasks. The mathematical foundations create a ``physics'' of information, which enable these techniques to apply effectively to a wide variety of complex data types, including missing data. Empirical results indicate that this may be a viable alternative path to neural networks with regard to scalable machine learning and artificial intelligence that can maintain human understandability of the underlying mechanics.

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