4 ms·
> A TM can do the same computation as a prism, or any other physical system. To be fair, this is only an unproven hypothesis. The Church-Turing Thesis is an a
by teraflop 6y ago
> A TM can do the same computation as a prism, or any other physical system.
To be fair, this is only an unproven hypothesis. The Church-Turing Thesis is an assumption about the physical world (which so far seems to have held up pretty well) rather than a theorem.
- lisper 6y agoIt is a hypothesis with no extant counterexample. Discovering a counterexample cannot be ruled out, but it would be the biggest breakthrough in the history of science, so it seems safe to bet against it.
- adamnemecek 6y agoIs it? Turing machine has been around for what? 70 years? And photonics has been around for like 50? Wrong theories have been around for much longer.
- lisper 6y ago> Is it? Yes, it is. Turing machines can do math, so a system that exhibited behavior that could not be emulated by a TM would have to be one whose behavior is not describable mathematically. No one has been able to come up with any idea of what such a system would even look like, let alone actually produce an example. > Wrong theories have been around for much longer. And crackpots have been around for even longer.
- adamnemecek 6y agoIt’s about doing math with certain performance characteristics. Check out the book “Real computation”. > And crackpots have been around for even longer. There’s nothing crackpoty about what I’m saying.