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

From: George Greene (greeneg_at_greeneg-cs.cs.unc.edu)
Date: 07/18/04 

Date: 18 Jul 2004 16:59:40 -0400

"Peter Olcott" <olcott@att.net> writes:
 : I am only using this National Institutes of Standards and Technology
 : definition of the Halting Problem.

If you knew anything about arguing or proving anything,
you would know that this is simply an Appeal to Authority
and that in the context of arguing or proving things,
THIS IS A FALLACY.

 : http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/haltingProblem.html

The issue is NOT whether WE understand this!
It is whether YOU do! YOU cannot prove any understanding
of this by posting a link to it: YOU HAVE TO TYPE IT YOURSELF,
paraphrased in your OWN words. The fact that long typing is
hard work means you will have to simplify a little in order
to spare your fingers, AND THAT'S HOW WE'LL KNOW whether you
do or don't understand what you are typing.

 : > >A fellow programmer where I work said that he thought that
 : > >I could win the Turing prize for this. Wouldn't that be ironic?

 : > Not likely, as we already have things (in mathematics) that aren't
 : > Turing machines that can answer the Halting problem for Turing
 : > machines.

Olcott obviously didn't know this.
But it does bear stressing that these things, whatEVER they may be,
are NOT physical computers that can be built.

So when he asks,
 : Please provide a concrete example.
, the first thing you have to do is clarify for him is that
THAT is QUITE impossible: it will HAVE to be an ABSTRACT example.

The question is whether P.O. is describing some stronger programming
paradigm that can solve the TM halting problem. I STRONGLY DOUBT THAT.
He simply does not have a clear enough understanding of what is going
on, to have managed that. More to the point, if someone were to present
him with a higher paradigm, odds are he wouldn't understand THAT EITHER,
since he couldn't understand THIS one. 

-- 
 --- The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal.
 --- (Feb.3,2004) Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (4-3), adv.Sen.#2175

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