4 ms·

Human heart is a Turing machine

• cjg 17y ago
  Of course, it's nonsense because a heart isn't infinite...
  • barrkel 17y ago
    PCs aren't infinite either, but that doesn't help compilers prove halting / non-halting during analysis. A few GB of memory, never mind internal and external storage, is more than enough state space to be equivalent for proof purposes.
    • eru 17y ago
      Or at least big enough, to make our models apply. The real world is also not made up of smooth stuff --- atoms pop up when you look to close. But engineers are using differential equations without too many problems.
• wglb 17y ago
  I have two difficulties with the abstract (not having read the entire paper.) First is while I don't dispute the claim that the heart cells are capable of turing-machine activities (conveniently forgetting the infinite tape as noted by cjg), it isn't evident that the heart's activities are limited to what the turning machine can compute. The second thing that i am wondering about is that the heart, like any physical oscillator, is a dynamic system, and as such, is chaotic. This seems to be an important question regarding the modeling. Chaos theory won't tell you that your heart won't stop, in fact, it won't give you any comfort that it will be immune to slight changes in its environment, say with increased salt content. And the turing-complete claim about the game of life is clearly for grids that have no bounds. I suspect that there are not an infinite number of states that the heart and all its cells can encompass. Thus the heart is not a Turing machine. So I am not seeing any added value of this Turing result that isn't already better described by Chaos theory.