POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Musing on the Halting Problem : Re: Musing on the Halting Problem Server Time
3 Sep 2024 17:16:21 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Musing on the Halting Problem  
From: Darren New
Date: 10 Oct 2010 21:29:07
Message: <4cb26863$1@news.povray.org>
Tim Cook wrote:
> On 2010-10-07 09:43, Invisible wrote:
>> Ah yes, it is impossible to write a computer program that can analyse
>> any possible computer program and tell you whether it halts in a finite
>> number of steps.
> 
> How does a person go about deciding the same problem?  Or is that 
> impossible, too?

That's impossible too.

Is this true or false:   "I am lying."

That's just one of the sorts of problems.

Note that there are many individual problems where you *can* figure this 
out. It's just that there's no way to figure it out for *all* problems, and 
no way of categorizing in advance which ones you can figure it out for and 
which you can't.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."


Post a reply to this message

Copyright 2003-2023 Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.