Re: What it would take... TO GET MY REVIEWERS TO PAY COMPLETE ATTENTION?

On 5/12/2025 6:58 PM, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

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

On 12/05/2025 18:21, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

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?

>
Do you know the term 'steelmanning'?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Steelmanning

 Yes.  That is, as it happens, how I address cranks.  I don't usually
argue against them but try to get them to say, as clearly and as
unambiguously as possible, what they are trying to say.  After a lot of
back and forth I got PO to be clear and unambiguous about what he was
saying.  For example, I asked
 | Here's the key question: do you still assert that H(P,P) == false is
| the "correct" answer even though P(P) halts?
 

H is required to compute the mapping from its
finite string input to the behavior that this
finite string actually specifies.
All of the computer science textbooks say that
a halt decider is to report on the behavior of
input as if it was directly executed because
they never noticed that this behavior can possibly
diverge from the behavior that the finite string
input specifies.
We can only correctly compute the mapping from the
finite string input to HHH(DD) to the behavior
that this finite string actually specifies by
having HHH simulate DD according to the rules
of the C/x86 language.
*We cannot correctly ignore these rules*
We cannot say that DD correctly simulated
by HHH jumps directly to its "return" statement
on the basis of some textbook quote.
--
Copyright 2024 Olcott "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius
hits a target no one else can see." Arthur Schopenhauer