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I think the identification of "discrete" with "computational" is not very useful. There is such a thing as an analogue computer after all.
by feanaro 5y ago
I think the identification of "discrete" with "computational" is not very useful. There is such a thing as an analogue computer after all.
- mjburgess 5y agoWe'd need to look at analogue computers in a lot of detail to figure out in what sense they count as computers. I am taking the computer science defintion, ie., a universal Turing machine. All computable functions are over discrete inputs and outputs. I suspect either (1) the sense of computer at-work in "analogue computer" might just be problem-relative, ie., it is just that someone uses this device to help them compute something; or (2) that analogue computers do compute computable functions (ie., their computation is discrete). I suspect it is the latter, ie., the output and input to an analogue computer is discrete. As I'm pretty sure there isnt any coherent sense of "computer" as defined for continuous "input".