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From: colonel@gloria.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: AI and Turing's Thesis
Message-ID: <761@gloria.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-May-85 10:14:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: gloria.761
Posted: Tue May 21 10:14:32 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 25-May-85 06:19:08 EDT
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["Those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact." --H. Jackson]

> But Turing also stated that "The halting problem for Turing machines is
> unsolvable" where the halting problem is defined as "Given a Turing
> machine M and an initial tape T, does M halt when started on tape T?"
> I take all this to mean that one computer, given the inputs of
> another computer's hardware and software specifications and its input,
> cannot determine if the program will halt, or will go into "infinite
> loop."  In other words, one computer cannot "debug" another.
> 
> Human beings can "debug" programs, and are capable of determining if
> a program goes into "infinite loop."  If human beings can perform an
> activity that Turing machines cannot, they must not be computable.
> Therefore, human intellectual activity cannot be simulated on a machine.

Debugging is one thing; looping is quite another.  Nobody has figured
out whether a (sound) program that searches for an odd perfect number
will halt, and perhaps nobody ever will.

The halting problem is purely mathematical.  Mathematics won't serve
as a model for all human activity.
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel