Normalized Information Distance and the Oscillation Hierarchy

Abstract: We study the complexity of approximations to the normalized information distance. We introduce a hierarchy of computable approximations by considering the number of oscillations. This is a function version of the difference hierarchy for sets. We show that the normalized information distance is not in any level of this hierarchy, strengthening previous nonapproximability results. As an ingredient to the proof, we also prove a conditional undecidability result about independence.