Re: Peter Olcott's Source of Confusion

From: Peter Olcott (olcott_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 07/03/04 

Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004 18:10:13 GMT

> Let me make your scenario more explicit. A person, call him
> "Jack" is sitting before a computer. The computer
> running a program P gives Jack the following information:
>
> I'm going to ask you a yes/no question. If you answer "yes"
> I will enter an infinite loop. If you answer "no" I will
> halt immediately. The question is: "Will I halt?" (Please
> answer "yes" or "no".
>
> It is impossible for *Jack* to answer the question "Will P halt?"
> But Jill, looking over Jack's shoulder can perfectly well answer
> that question. For instance, maybe she knows that Jack answers
> "no" to every question asked of him, whether that's the correct
> answer or not. In that case, the correct answer to the question
> is "yes", and Jill can perfectly well give that correct answer.

But this does not show that my statement if false.
That only shows that you explicitly ignored part of
my statement.

No INDIVIDUAL ENTITIES ACTING ALONE
can possibly provide the correct answer to the question:
Does this program halt?

Jack + Jill = 2. Individual entities acting alone requires
one individual person (or other entity) acting alone. I
am very surprised that you can have such a high degree
of knowledge of Turing Machines and decidability, yet
not be able to distinguish between ONE and TWO.

<sarcasm>What do they call this? idiot savant?<sarcasm>
In actuality there are two other reasons for your error
that are more reasonable:
(1) Not paying enough attention.
(2) So caught up in refuting me that facts and truth don't
matter to you.

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