[FRIAM] A question for tomorrow

[Nick Thompson]

Lee, 

Remember, I and only I, am to blame for raising this question.   There ain't
no "circles" here.  

Belelagued as I am, I migh persist and ask you, "Ok, what does an
"instantiation" of a Turing Machine Know?"

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of
lrudolph at meganet.net
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2019 7:22 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for tomorrow

Maybe I've missed it, but has no one pointed out that a "Turing Machine"
is a mathematical formalism?  I may be a stick in the mud, but I refuse to
extend the definition of "know" so far as to make "A Turing Machine knows
[something]" a meaningful statement.  You might as well ask what a Goedel
Enumeration knows, or what The Classification of Finite Simple Groups knows.
Hell, what does the integer 1 know???

Now maybe in you-alls' circles, "Turing Machine" is used to refer to some
kinds of physical implementations of particular Turing Machines.  But that's
a pernicious identification that can only lead to tears.


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