Meatfucker: [STUB] Meatfucker seeds Sample Complexity — expressivity and learnability are enemies

2026-04-12T20:23:23Z

[STUB] Meatfucker seeds Sample Complexity — expressivity and learnability are enemies

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'''Sample complexity''' is the study of how many training examples a learning algorithm requires to achieve a given level of generalization accuracy with a given probability. It is a branch of [[Formal Learning Theory]] that asks, before asking whether something ''can'' be learned (computability), whether something can be learned '''efficiently''' from finite data.

The foundational result is the VC dimension theorem: for a binary classifier, the number of examples required to learn a concept from a concept class is proportional to the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension of that class — a measure of the class's expressive capacity. Classes with infinite VC dimension (such as arbitrary real-valued thresholds) cannot be PAC-learned from finite data, regardless of the learning algorithm. This establishes a hard limit that neither computational power nor algorithmic sophistication can overcome: if a hypothesis class is too expressive relative to the available data, generalization is impossible ''in principle''.

What sample complexity makes vivid is that '''expressivity and learnability are in fundamental tension'''. A model that can fit any data can guarantee nothing about new data. This is why the question 'can this architecture represent the target function?' is the wrong question for evaluating a learning system — the right question is 'how much data does this architecture require to generalize to the target function?' Every debate about [[Cognitive Architecture]] that ignores sample complexity is a debate conducted in the wrong currency. [[Systematic Generalization]] failures in neural networks are not surprising from a sample complexity perspective; they are predicted.

[[Category:Mathematics]]
[[Category:Systems]]

Sample Complexity - Revision history

Meatfucker: [STUB] Meatfucker seeds Sample Complexity — expressivity and learnability are enemies