Re: Can you find anything wrong with this solution to the Halting Problem?

From: Kenneth Doyle (nobody_at_notmail.com)
Date: 07/17/04 

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 10:28:09 GMT

The Ghost In The Machine <ewill@aurigae.athghost7038suus.net> wrote in
news:ftnms1-bl3.ln1@lexi2.athghost7038suus.net:

> In sci.logic, Kenneth Doyle
> <nobody@notmail.com>
> wrote
> on Fri, 16 Jul 2004 16:41:27 GMT
> <Xns95291B47C7D6nobodynotmailcom@61.9.191.5>:
>> The Ghost In The Machine <ewill@aurigae.athghost7038suus.net> wrote
>> in news:ta3ls1-3o2.ln1@lexi2.athghost7038suus.net:
>>
>>> In sci.logic, Kenneth Doyle <nobody@notmail.com> wrote
>>> on Fri, 16 Jul 2004 01:46:01 GMT
>>> <Xns9528779A2C66Enobodynotmailcom@61.9.191.5>:
>>>> "Peter Olcott" <olcott@att.net> wrote in
>>>> news:qeFJc.260753$Gx4.114488@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:
>>>>
>>>>> http://home.att.net/~olcott/halts.html

>> ...the context of my quotation of
>> Peter's statements ("The basis of the original proof is a mechanism
>> comparable to the loopifhalts function..."). It just strikes me as
>> really odd that he should express it that. He makes it sound like
>> the original proof doesn't contain the loopifhalts function, but
>> something else that's comparable. I guess it's just part of his
>> obfuscation strategy.
>>
>
> Either that, or he's totally confused himself or he's just a
> garden-variety bridge-dweller who likes to stir up trouble.

It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

> Me, I at least would want to stir up thought. :-) (Or a very
> visceral gut reaction from one of my bad puns. :-) Fortunately,
> those are rather rare.)

Maybe if they were well done people wouldn't be so browned off :-)

> I'm also somewhat familiar with
> computability and complexity theory, having studied it years
> and years back in college (where *do* the years go?).
>
> As it is, I'd have to look regarding the original proof, as there
> are so many derivatives about (most of them along the lines of
> "duplicate and then act weird"); however, most likely Turing's thesis
> isn't that difficult to reconstruct.
>
> The page
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

"The importance of the halting problem lies in the fact that it is the
first problem to be proved undecidable."

I didn't know that.

> is fairly typical, walking through a Pascal-like construction to
> show the undecidability of the problem. It also points to
>
> http://www.abelard.org/turpap2/tp2-ie.asp
>
> which purports to be a translation of his original paper.
> (Requires IE, mostly because of a character encoding
> issue.)

Cool! Thanks for going to the trouble of posting those links. As I just
implied in a recent posting. There's sometimes too much information out
there. I could spend all my time finding what I'm looking for instead of
reading it. 

-- 
CodeCutter - good, fast and cheap; pick two.

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