Re: Universal grammar

"Hans" == Hans Aberg <haberg@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>> These are two topics for a further discussion, but consider
>> that I really understand little of binary computers, you might
>> lose your nerves with me, trying to explain your math prover to
>> a computer moron of my caliber.

Hans> Only you can improve your computer skills. Here is how
Hans> a computer works: At startup time, it gets a signal called
Hans> an "interrupt",

That's not a interrupt. That a _reset_ signal.


Hans> which tells the CPU to look at a specific memory
Hans> address, retrieve its contents and interpret it as a machine
Hans> instruction. The machine instruction then tells the CPU
Hans> where to find the next machine instruction.

Normally, this is not necessary, because instructions are by default
stored sequentially in memory. You only need to give the address of
the next instruction when this default has to be overridden. (Unless
you're talking about microcode, where the "next instruction address"
is usually not the subsequent address in the microcode space.)


Hans> And so on. Now you know everything there is to know about
Hans> computers. :-) They are all the same.

No. That's just the von-Neumann model of digital computers. Non
von-Neumann computers may not work like that, and analog computers are
different. Very early computers are non von-Neumann.


Hans> If they have unlimited memory and computing time, they all
Hans> can do exactly the same things; this called "Turing
Hans> equivalence".

Right. And there are many problems which are not Turing-computable,
which means these problems can't be solved by *digital computers*.
Example: verifying whether God exists.


--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
.

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