Re: [PO] Re: Refutation of the Halting Problem's Proof (Clarifications Wanted)

From: Peter Olcott (olcott_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 08/26/04 

Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 00:27:07 GMT

"Simon G Best" <s.g.best@btopenworld.com> wrote in message news:412CA1D1.4070003@btopenworld.com...
> Peter Olcott wrote:
> > www.halting-proiblem.com
>
> You didn't even get your own web address right.

I was not awake yet.

> > I want to make what I am saying as clear as possible.
>
> That is an excellent idea :-)
>
> > If anyone
> > has any points that are still not clear, this is the thread to ask for
> > clarifications.
> >
> > Also I would like to work towards a consensus of the best way
> > to present the ideas that are mentioned on my website, and in
> > these threads. This might require me to formalize some of these
> > points. I would be happy to make my material easier to understand,
> > and eliminate any ambiguities. I welcome all constructive critiques.
> >
> > The end result of these discussions will be a website posting that most
> > everyone can agree on the meaning of. In other words it should be
> > clear to everyone what I am saying.
> >
> > If there seem to be any major gaps in what I am saying, please point
> > these out. The most significant gap that I can see is exactly how to
> > construct the augmented UTM without going beyond the capabilities
> > of an regular TM. That this can be accomplished seems obvious.
> > Exactly how this would be accomplished is less obvious.
> >
> > Thanks again for your time.
>
> The first thing is the heading on the page, "Refuting the Undecidability
> of the Halting Problem". It doesn't make sense. It's like, 'refuting
> the ambiguity of English', or, 'refuting the redness of ripe tomatoes',
> or, 'refuting the Welshness of Tom Jones', or, 'refuting the invincible
> ignorance of net.kooks'.

One claims that is gaining acceptance is that I have correctly refuted
every existing proof of the Undecidability of the Halting Problem.
What is a more concise way of saying this?

> The second thing is that you're calling your abstract a "Quick Summary",
> rather than "Abstract". Of course, an abstract /is/ a quick summary,
> but I'd suggest labelling it as an abstract. Other than that, your
> abstract needs to be completely rewritten. Fortunately, that's

I want to eliminate any percieved ambiguity, do you see any?

> something that can be left until the rest of your document has been
> completely rewritten.
>
> Next, "Definition of the Halting Problem". It's still wrong. The
> Halting Problem is the problem of determining whether or not an
> arbitrary Turing Machine, M, would halt on an arbitrary input, x. More
> specifically, it is the problem of finding a Turing Machine which
> carries out such determinations in the general case where M may be any
> (in the sense of each and every) Turing Machine, and x may be any (again
> in the sense of each and every) input.

Someone else provided that form. I think that I wil eventually go with
something like that.

> You may also need to include a number of other definitions, or at least
> clearly refer to accepted, established definitions of terms and the like.
>
> The rest of the document also needs to be completely rewritten.

Ernest Hemingway thought that his every rewrite was garbage until
about the twentieth one.

> It'll still be wrong, though.
>
> Simon
>

I do admit that this continues to be the presumption.
That is why I am going to clean it up for academia.
Hopefully if the audience is restricted to PhD computer
science professors that have an emphasis on automata
theory I will reach a group of people that will more
often than not know the burdern of proof of proving
a negative. In any case If I reach twenty such people,
and I am right, at least one of them will see it too.

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