Re: Why does Olcott care about simulation, anyway?

On 03/06/2024 10:42, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

Mike Terry <news.dead.person.stones@darjeeling.plus.com> writes:
 

PO's D(D) halts, as illustrated in various traces that have been posted here.
PO's H(D,D) returns 0 : [NOT halting] also as illustrated in various traces.
i.e. exactly as the Linz proof claims.  PO has acknowledged both these
results.  Same for the HH/DD variants.
>
You might imagine that's the end of the matter - PO failed.  :)
>
That's right, but PO just carries on anyway!

 He has quite explicitly stated that false (0) is the correct result for
H(D,D) "even though D(D) halts".  I am mystified why anyone continues to
discuss the matter until he equally explicitly repudiates that claim.
 

So really, there's no /need/ to "refute" everything he says - the end
result will be exactly the same as just ignoring him, BUT WITH THE LATTER
ONLY NEEDING 0.1% OF THE EFFORT and eliminating 99.9% of the posting
clutter in these newsgroups.  [ok, comp.theory will die pretty quickly, but
it is not discussing anything useful, so that's ok for most people... (with
some reluctance)]

 Do we know that?  There's the start of a discussion of quines on
comp.lang.c that probably belongs here, but no will dare come here to
discuss it because of all the junk.

I'd like to think that comp.theory could continue without PO.  That would be great but let's face it there aren't too many people around with questions or suggestions about computing theory, and with the GG links severed there will be less new blood finding the group in future.
I saw the quine thread last night, but haven't thought about it much yet.  My first thought was aren't quines supposed to be about a specific programming language like C where the executable is generated purely from compiling the C code?  Malcolm has presumably embedded his source folder as a binary resource in his executable, and the executable just extracts that resource and "prints" it. If that counted as a quine then quines would be pretty unchallenging, hence more thought needed (like how did his source folder get "compiled" into his quine executable?  and for me, what /exactly/ is a quine?  I'm not clear on that when you move beyond a single compiler to entire tool sets that produce a program... Such a toolset can simply copy the source to some location accessible to the program [like a binary resource inside the executable] and the program can just access it and print it out?).
Anyway the C and C++ groups have healthy traffic regardless of PO, so will carry on - at least as long as the current crowd are around.  I still think the break with GG will ultimately cut off new posters who would have encountered the group via GG, so the long term future is not good, but that's some way off.
Mike.