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Edit: whoa, they really buried the lede: the upper bound for the knowable values may be as low as BB(1919) as of May 15! I'm confused by the winning TM given f

by pohl 10y ago

Edit: whoa, they really buried the lede: the upper bound for the knowable values may be as low as BB(1919) as of May 15! I'm confused by the winning TM given for BB(2). It has 3 non-halt states, but N==2 should be a TM with 2, shouldn't it? Did they merely put the illustration for BB(3) in the wrong place? Edit: yeah, looks like they just put the illustration for BB(3) in the wrong place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#/media/File:State_diagram_3_state_busy_beaver_2B.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#/media/File:Sta...

9911o9w8191 10y ago
The author has the first name "John Carlos". Why not take an educated guess and use (gasp) gendered pronouns?
- pohl 10y ago
  Because the byline wasn't easy to find on the device I read it on, and the possibility that someone might be offended by gender neutrality seemed far-fetched at the time.
- random28345 10y ago
  > The author has the first name "John Carlos". Why not take an educated guess and use (gasp) gendered pronouns? Because the text of the article could have been generated by a Turing machine with the pseudonym "John Carlos". And on the internet, nobody knows if you're a man, woman, dog, or sufficiently complicated state machine. tl;dr: Non-gendered pronouns are inclusive and never inappropriate on the internet.