Re: How to write a self-referencial TM?

On 2025-05-18 16:08, olcott wrote:

On 5/18/2025 4:58 PM, André G. Isaak wrote:

In English, both 'description' and 'specification' can refer to something which is either complete or only partial.
>

 Description typically means partial and
specification typically means complete.
 

I don't think you'll find that most people will agree with this. That might be your usage.
The problem is that 'specification' has already been used in much of this discussion to mean something else. A TM's specification outlines what it is that that TM is supposed to do without going into the details of how it actually does it.
For example, the specification of a Parity Decider would be a TM takes a representation of a natural number as its initial tape content and accepts it only if it is even.
The description of that machine, on the other hand, would describe what the alphabet of this machine is, what it's state transitions are, etc. i.e. it would give all the information necessary to actually construct the machine.
André
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