4 ms·

You can't. Anything that is editorialized will skew to an extreme over time. In the past, wikipedia was bad because its quality of information was generally ter

by qiskit 5y ago

You can't. Anything that is editorialized will skew to an extreme over time. In the past, wikipedia was bad because its quality of information was generally terrible. "Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem Alan Turing did no such thing, but that's wikipedia for you. On topics you know nothing about, it feels like wikipedia is great. But on topics you have some knowledge/expertise, wikipedia reveals itself to be amateurish nonsense. Now throw in politics and it isn't good for anything but superficial knowledge in a narrow band of non-political topics. And that's not touching on the problems of limiting the sources to select news/media sources which exacerbates the problem. If you have time to waste, use waybackmachine to compare the wikipedia pages of "controversial" figures and see how noticeably those pages have been changed in a consistent manner. The only thing you can do is set up competing wikipedias. My hope is major countries around the world set up their own wikipedias ( hopefully with english translations ) because I don't see anyone competing with wikipedia in the US.

olah_1 5y ago
> Anything that is editorialized will skew to an extreme over time It is exactly why Actuator’s point in the OP was actually incorrect. > While Wikipedia's model seems far better than an individual publishing house's encyclopedia The illusion of an unbiased “encyclopedia for the world” has harmed the decentralization of information. It has actually created a unipolarity much like we see elsewhere around the world. It would be far better to have multiple different encyclopedia companies that could compete and perhaps even specialize in certain areas. But how do we keep the convenience of having them all connected? That is what Larry Sanger has been working on[1]. A federated network of encyclopedias that use the same data formats. [1]: https://encyclosphere.org/ https://encyclosphere.org/
munch117 5y ago
Care to tell us who did prove it then? While the 1936 paper, "On Computable Numbers", doesn't explicitly mention the halting problem, it does cover the Entscheidungsproblem, and that the halting problem is undecidable follows trivially from that.
- qiskit 5y ago
  "Jack Copeland (2004) attributes the introduction of the term halting problem to the work of Martin Davis in the 1950s.[1]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem Martin Davis did in the early 1950s after Turing's death. > and that the halting problem is undecidable follows trivially from that. Trivially? Took nearly 2 decades after Turing published his paper for Martin Davis to come up with the halting problem. And it required a reformulation of the Turing machine itself. Today, we view 'good' Turing machines as those that stop/halt. Turing viewed 'good' Turing machines as those that continued forever ( aka never stops ).
  - munch117 5y ago
    If you can solve the halting problem, then you can apply it to a solution checker that works by enumerating potential solutions and halting when it finds one. Therefore, if you've solved the halting problem then you've also solved the Entscheidungsproblem, and since the latter is impossible, it follows that the premise of having a solution to the halting problem is false. Yes, that does seems trivial to me. Although maybe that just shows the brilliance of the people who came up with it and made it sound simple. Did Turing's original machine not have a halting state? That does change things. You can hardly express the halting problem if you don't have the concept of halting.
    - qiskit 5y ago
      Using your logic, Alonzo Church should be credited with the Turing machine and the halting problem since he solved Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem before Turing did. If everything follows trivially from an answer to the same question, then Turing's solution follows trivially from Church. Not sure why you are fixated on the Entscheidungsproblem. Turing's claim to fame isn't the entscheidungsproblem. If it were, nobody would know who Turing is because Church already solved the entscheidungsproblem. His contribution are the theoretical concept of Turing machines ( universal turing machines especially ) and computable numbers. > Did Turing's original machine not have a halting state? Are you asking me? > You can hardly express the halting problem if you don't have the concept of halting. He did have a concept of halting. He called them circular/unsatisfactory. Did you even read his paper?
Mathnerd314 5y ago
I worked on the Halting problem article a bit. The article has a "more footnotes needed" warning at the top - nobody is claiming the article is good. But at least the history section is well-sourced, so it's clear that the 1936 proof refers to Turing's paper "On Computable Numbers With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem". There is a summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing%27s_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing%27s_proof.
slavik81 5y ago
The pages on Verlet integration are also quite poor. If you follow the sources, they sometimes directly contradict the article text.

by qiskit 5y ago

olah_1 5y ago

> Anything that is editorialized will skew to an extreme over time It is exactly why Actuator’s point in the OP was actually incorrect. > While Wikipedia's model seems far better than an individual publishing house's encyclopedia The illusion of an unbiased “encyclopedia for the world” has harmed the decentralization of information. It has actually created a unipolarity much like we see elsewhere around the world. It would be far better to have multiple different encyclopedia companies that could compete and perhaps even specialize in certain areas. But how do we keep the convenience of having them all connected? That is what Larry Sanger has been working on[1]. A federated network of encyclopedias that use the same data formats. [1]: https://encyclosphere.org/ https://encyclosphere.org/

munch117 5y ago

Care to tell us who did prove it then? While the 1936 paper, "On Computable Numbers", doesn't explicitly mention the halting problem, it does cover the Entscheidungsproblem, and that the halting problem is undecidable follows trivially from that.

qiskit 5y ago
"Jack Copeland (2004) attributes the introduction of the term halting problem to the work of Martin Davis in the 1950s.[1]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem Martin Davis did in the early 1950s after Turing's death. > and that the halting problem is undecidable follows trivially from that. Trivially? Took nearly 2 decades after Turing published his paper for Martin Davis to come up with the halting problem. And it required a reformulation of the Turing machine itself. Today, we view 'good' Turing machines as those that stop/halt. Turing viewed 'good' Turing machines as those that continued forever ( aka never stops ).
- munch117 5y ago
  If you can solve the halting problem, then you can apply it to a solution checker that works by enumerating potential solutions and halting when it finds one. Therefore, if you've solved the halting problem then you've also solved the Entscheidungsproblem, and since the latter is impossible, it follows that the premise of having a solution to the halting problem is false. Yes, that does seems trivial to me. Although maybe that just shows the brilliance of the people who came up with it and made it sound simple. Did Turing's original machine not have a halting state? That does change things. You can hardly express the halting problem if you don't have the concept of halting.
  - qiskit 5y ago
    Using your logic, Alonzo Church should be credited with the Turing machine and the halting problem since he solved Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem before Turing did. If everything follows trivially from an answer to the same question, then Turing's solution follows trivially from Church. Not sure why you are fixated on the Entscheidungsproblem. Turing's claim to fame isn't the entscheidungsproblem. If it were, nobody would know who Turing is because Church already solved the entscheidungsproblem. His contribution are the theoretical concept of Turing machines ( universal turing machines especially ) and computable numbers. > Did Turing's original machine not have a halting state? Are you asking me? > You can hardly express the halting problem if you don't have the concept of halting. He did have a concept of halting. He called them circular/unsatisfactory. Did you even read his paper?

Mathnerd314 5y ago

I worked on the Halting problem article a bit. The article has a "more footnotes needed" warning at the top - nobody is claiming the article is good. But at least the history section is well-sourced, so it's clear that the 1936 proof refers to Turing's paper "On Computable Numbers With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem". There is a summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing%27s_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing%27s_proof.

slavik81 5y ago

The pages on Verlet integration are also quite poor. If you follow the sources, they sometimes directly contradict the article text.