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When I was working on this post I found the way that Turing defined “computable numbers” I bit unsatisfying as well. What would you suggest I do to deliver on
by samwho 2y ago
When I was working on this post I found the way that Turing defined “computable numbers” I bit unsatisfying as well.
What would you suggest I do to deliver on this?
- layer8 2y agoI would suggest to not promise it. ;) Maybe rather: • That some truths cannot be computed.
- samwho 2y agoI’m not sure I understand. I do explain what can be computed, don’t I? > Something is said to be "computable" if there exists an algorithm that can get from the given input to the expected output. For example, adding together 2 integers is computable. I could probably have dug into some of the restrictions, like how it has to be a finite number of steps.
- layer8 2y agoThis defines the term “computable”, but it doesn’t give you a sense of what things can be computed. Defining a term is entirely different from the above promise. At the level you’re describing Turing machines, it’s also not clear that readers would have a precise notion of what an algorithm is. At no point (unless I missed it) do you explain that any algorithm is supposed to be implementable as a Turing machine, or the assumption of what is otherwise known as the Church–Turing thesis.
- samwho 2y agoThat’s true, there’s no explicit definition of what an algorithm is. I may revisit this. Thank you for the feedback.