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From: kissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin Kissell)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: the halting problem in history
Message-ID: <267@flairvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Nov-83 19:38:02 EST
Article-I.D.: flairvax.267
Posted: Sat Nov 12 19:38:02 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Nov-83 19:12:38 EST
Organization: Fairchild AI Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 10

"...If there were any subroutines in the brain that did not halt..."

It seems to me that there are likely large numbers of subroutines in the
brain that aren't *supposed* to halt.  Like breathing.  Nothing wrong with
that; the brain is not a metaphor for a single-instruction-stream
processor.  I've often suspected, though, that some pathological states,
depression, obsession, addiction, etcetera can be modeled as infinite
loops "executed" by a portion of the brain, and thus why "shock" treatments
sometimes have beneficial effects on depression; a brutal "reset" of the
whole "system".