Re: Turing Machines and Physical Computation

From: JXStern (JXSternChangeX2R_at_gte.net)
Date: 11/28/04 

Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 17:37:42 GMT

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 08:52:09 GMT, "Stephen Harris"
<cyberguard1048-usenet@yahoo.com> wrote:
>That is the point which is being objected to because a physically
>finite machine *cannot* take infinite time to run, and no a simple
>state machine *cannot* turn out infinite strings in infinite time.
>
>A finite machine cannot do that, only a theoretical machine
>can perform infinite operations which means it is an abstraction,
>hypothetical, and certainly not physical!
...

Substitute "unbounded" for "infinite" when talking about physical
machines, then, but one can have a theoretically finite machine
running in theoretically infinite time to turn out a theoretically
infinite string, nothing is changed. Yes, folks, you can have a
theoretically finite machine, let's not forget the simple things.

In fact, cannot one have a very simple state machine handle pretty
much unbounded a^n b^n? That occurred to me late last night.

J.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Turing Machines and Physical Computation
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