Re: Foundation for a Formal Refutation of the Original Halting Problem?

From: Marc Goodman (marc.goodman_at_comcast.net)
Date: 08/03/04 

Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 13:20:12 GMT

David C. Ullrich wrote:
>>We can see that in one case the returned result is used to change
>>the behavior of the program being analyzed,
>
>
> you keep saying this. it's not so.

I don't understand why it matters. LET Peter's program use
magic if he wants to. It still doesn't allow his program to
return a correct "yes/no" answer on pathological cases like
the one Turing used. And, he can't claim that those pathological
cases don't exist because he needs Turing's proof to do that.

How can Peter's program possibly return correct results
for a program that halts if it loops, and loops if it
halts? It might be a lot easier to convince him that
neither "halt" nor "loop" are correct answers, and that
answering "neither" doesn't disprove Turing's proof.

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