belief-revision-representational-blow-up

IN premise — summaries/2026/08/24/wiki-Belief_revision-chunk-3.md

Created 2026-08-24T17:11:07+00:00

Belief revision exhibits representational blow-up: the result of revising two formulae may not be representable in space polynomial in the size of the inputs, meaning revision can exponentially increase knowledge base size

Summary

When a system tries to update or reconcile two sets of formal rules, the result can be exponentially larger than either input, not just a little bigger. This means the very act of fixing or extending knowledge can overwhelm a system's memory and processing budget, making revision a practical bottleneck rather than a straightforward step.