Re: How the requirements that Professor Sipser agreed to are exactly met --- WDH

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes:

Fair enough, but what I was trying to do in this instance was
to focus on the single statement that PO says Sipser agreed to.
PO complains, correctly or not, that nobody understands or
ackowledges the statement.  I suggest that perhaps it's actually
a true statement *in isolation* (very roughly if a working halt
detector exists then it works as a halt detector), even though it
does not support PO's wider claims.

I thought I addressed that directly.  Disconnected from the original
context, it can been seen as either a rather obvious true statement or
as a true hypothetical.  The trouble is, there is no way to consider it
*in isolation* because the meaning of the words depends on context.  An
educated reader will read a "simulating halt decider" either as a
nonexistent entity or as a "best attempt" decider of some class of
cases.  Some particular readers will imbue the names H and D with a very
specific technical meaning.  And any attempt to re-word it to arrive at
something every educated reader will accept as correct will render it
irrelevant to PO who only cares about one meaning he has given it.

--
Ben.