Re: What it would take...

Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> writes:

The HHH code doesn't exactly invite confidence in its author, and his theory
is all over the place, but a thought experiment suggests itself.
>
If we were not all wasting our time bickering with a career bickerer... if
we were to really /really/ try, could we patch up his case and send him on
to his Turing Award? And if so, how?

Eh?

ISTR that there is suspected to be a theoretical window for him, so I
suppose what I'm asking is what sort of boathook we would need to poke that
window a little wider.

What on Earth do you mean?  What window?

Can he even get there from here? Evidence would suggest that simulation is a
dead end unless he can find a way to get the simulated program to include
its own simulation in its behaviour, which he has not yet managed to do -
but /is/ there a way?
>
Or could he abandon simulation completely and instead write a TM parser that
builds an AST and walks it looking for evidence of terminating or looping?
If he could, would that turn the trick?
>
Or do we have a latter day Cantor waiting in the wings to close the window
once and for all?

There is no window.  But your reference to Cantor is spot on in that

(a) It is obvious that there are uncountably many non-computable
functions since there are only countably many TMs.

(b) Direct (i.e. not by contradiction) proofs of the halting theorem use
a diagonal argument, like Cantor.  I think I outlined one earlier, but
there is one in Linz that PO refuses to read.

Is there, in short, any way of putting out this un-halting flame war and
turning this group to better use?

I have tired to suggest that everyone simply stop replying to PO.  He
does not want to be right, he wants the attention and after a final
flurry of insulting posts he would probably go elsewhere.

(Rather belatedly, it occurs to me that you might be being sarcastic.
You might be suggesting we just agree with PO and see if that stops him
posting.)

--
Ben.