Re: Poll: Are PCs Turing Machines?

spinoza1111_at_yahoo.com
Date: 12/14/04 

Date: 14 Dec 2004 03:10:09 -0800

Mark Nudelman wrote:
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com wrote:
> > It doesn't explicitly say that TMs are "better" since the logic of
> > what Derrida called Differance never says the favored term is
> > "better". Instead the "betterness" remains of necessity tacit.
> >
> > In mathematics, a "problem" is an abstraction. In computer science
> > (described by Dijkstra as applied mathematics), a "problem" is
> > phenomenological and its content includes human beings.
> >
> > Therefore, monster "problems", of the sort solved by TMs and not
> > solvable by PCs, do not exist.
>
> So the only problems that "exist" are the ones that are solvable by
> currently existing computers? The problem of factoring a 30 digit
number,
> for example, didn't exist until computers were capable of solving it?
The

Correct. If computer science is applied mathematics, then it is part of
history. Its problem set is limited to problems that in principle can
be solved. Of course, this set expands but owing to the daily struggles
of computer scientists with material, concrete realities, to
deliberately lapse into Marxist phrasing. They don't "exist" in
Platonic la-la land prior to the date at which they are empirically
solvable.

> problem of factoring a 1000 digit number doesn't exist today, but
will exist
> whenever a computer is capable of solving it? What does it mean for
a
> problem to "not exist"?
>
> --Mark