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From: creedy@cca.UUCP (Christopher Reedy)
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Re: Sc--nce Attack (really on minds
Message-ID: <4932@cca.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Nov-85 09:51:28 EST
Article-I.D.: cca.4932
Posted: Fri Nov 15 09:51:28 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Nov-85 06:01:17 EST
References: <10810@ucbvax.UUCP> <>
Reply-To: creedy@cca.UUCP (Christopher Reedy)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge
Lines: 26

In article <> marv@ISM780.UUCP writes:
>
>I claim that a finite sized human (not all information processing is done in
>the brain) *does* imply a finite state machine machine.  I think that human
>information processing  involves chemical reactions (a finite number atoms)
>and energy tranformations (a finite number of photons) and therfore only a
>finite (albeit very large) number of states.
>
Unfortunately, at this level of interaction, quantum mechanics applies.
I.e. results of interactions are non-deterministic.  I am not enough of
a theoretical physicist to know whether the simulation is still possible
using probability distributions.  However, it seems like a more
sophisticated argument is needed here.
>
>And surely you don't mean to imply that the amount of information stored in
>a finite sized set of librarys is infinite.
>
A Turing Machine does not have infinite memory in the sense you imply.
The amount of memory that is in use at any point in time by a Turing
machine is finite, even though it can grow without bound over the life
of the computation.  I am not convinced that this is any different from
the memory that is available to a person who has the capability to
research for any information that is available in any library anywhere.

Chris Reedy