Re: The Psychology of Responding to Crackpots

From: Peter Olcott (olcott_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 07/09/04 

Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 22:17:28 GMT

> >If the WillHalt() function is free to choose from an infinite
> >set of diagnostic messages, then the counter-example
> >program would fail to thwart it.
>
> Exactly what the modified version of the problem is
> is not clear to me. _Is_ the following a requirement
> or not?
>
> (*) The program is required to emit at least one
> disgnostic for every program that hangs, and not
> allowed to emit any diagnostics for any program
> that doesn't hang.

No this is forbidden. It must produce at least four
KB of diagnostics for every program. Any program
that is flawless is analyzed as to exactly why it is
flawless.

> If (*) is not required then the program is allowed
> to say "Don't know" regardless of the input, making
> the revised problem extremely silly. Otoh if (*)
> _is_ required then there is no such program -
> Turing proved this.

It is not allowed to say don't know. If we assume
the extreme case, the sum total of all human wisdom
pertaining to the mathematics of software systems
is encoded into this program checker.

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