give it a normal text prompt, and it
continues that prompt by searching
for the byte sequences that compress
best.
One moment, how are we supposed to know how well that search was done? There is no way to search a meaningful part of the search space.
So the result does only gives us some lower bound of how well gzip works as a "plausibility tester" of a continuation of a text. The space of possible sequences is gazillion orders of magnitude larger than what was searched. So there might be sequences in there that compress much better.
So the result does only gives us some lower bound of how well gzip works as a "plausibility tester" of a continuation of a text. The space of possible sequences is gazillion orders of magnitude larger than what was searched. So there might be sequences in there that compress much better.