POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : An Unholy Winning Streak : Re: An Unholy Winning Streak Server Time
4 Sep 2024 01:21:55 EDT (-0400)
  Re: An Unholy Winning Streak  
From: Orchid XP v8
Date: 11 Jun 2010 14:25:04
Message: <4c127f80@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> If I sold my soul for the ability to solve the Halting Problem, would 
>> that allow me to defy the usual laws of causality?
> 
>   You can't sell your soul to solve an unsolvable problem.

It is known that a Turning machine cannot determine whether a given 
machine will halt. No reason why I can't sell my soul for the ability to 
be able to tell. ;-)

>   However, if you sell it for the proof to the P=NP question and the
> Riemann hypothesis, that would be something. (Or at least you would get
> 2 million dollars richer, and famous among the scientific community.)

Unfortunately, we're dealing with the Devil here. He'd probably agree to 
buy my soul in return for the proof of P=NP, and then it turns out that 
actually P /= NP so I get nothing (but He still gets my soul...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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