Re: Yet another Attempt at Disproving the Halting Problem

From: Peter Olcott (olcott_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 08/02/04 

Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 02:51:46 GMT

"Marc Goodman" <marc.goodman@comcast.net> wrote in message news:Ei0Pc.67835$eM2.31538@attbi_s51...
> Peter Olcott wrote:
> > No, there is a subtle but crucial difference between what you said,
> > and what would actually occur. My program still GETS the right
> > answer, and it sees that it is prohibited from providing this correct
> > answer to your f1() function, otherwise f1() would use this to change
> > its behavior, thus making this right answer into a wrong answer.
> > So for all practical purposes, adding this feedback loop effectively
> > disables the output mechanism. The halt analyzer still gets the correct
> > results.
>
> You still think there are "correct results" here. There aren't.

So if a program halts when it is executed, and the halt analyzer
determines this, then it is not correct?

> The programs are in an indeterminate, contradictory state. The
> correct answer is that the programs neither halt nor loop. They
> do both, or neither, something clearly beyond the scope of a
> Turing Machine.

Even with the high degree of GroupThink here you won't get a lot of
agreement on that one. You will find very few people here that will say
yes, I agree with that statement 100%. I have found that when people
here are direct disagreement, that they express it as:
"You could have stated that more clearly",
not wanting to upset the apple cart of group cohesiveness.

That you are wrong is very easy to see. A program either halts or it fails
to halt. There is no in-between third state. When one program attempts
to determine if another program halts, then there are three states:
(1) It Halts
(2) It does not halt
(3) You got me, I don't know if it halts or not.

> If your program reports "halt" it is wrong.
> If your program reports "not halt" it is wrong.
>
> The reason you don't get this is because you think you are
> God and that there is Absolute Truth and that it is possible
> to know everything in the universe, and any suggestion that
> some things are intrinsically unknowable causes you to
> go into a tizzy. You KNOW it can't be true, because you
> DO know everything.
>
> Do you agree or disagree with the following statement:
> "It is possible that some things are intrinsically
> unknowable?" If you answer, "no", then I can't imagine
> that there's any point in anyone continuing this conversation
> because you're philisophically incapable of "getting it."
>

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