[FRIAM] A question for tomorrow

Sat Apr 27 13:56:00 EDT 2019

Or implement a Mersenne Twister with a period of 219937 – 1 and inject some conditionals in the machine to make the `mistakes’.   That’s a distinction without a difference to a behaviorist.
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Date: Saturday, April 27, 2019 at 11:29 AM
To: "Russ.Abbott at gmail.com" <Russ.Abbott at gmail.com>, The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for tomorrow

Lee, Surely someone has developed probabilistic Turing Machines which can, very rarely, make errors.  I am ignorant of the field since 1972 when I took a course which used Hopcroft and Ullman as a text.

Nick, I agree that your questions are charming.  Your humanity is clearly seen.  By the way, it occurred to me this morning that the motto of behaviorists should be, "If it talks like a duck🦆...etc"

Frank
-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 10:59 AM Russ Abbott <russ.abbott at gmail.com<mailto:russ.abbott at gmail.com>> wrote:
Nick,

One of the most attractive things about your posts is how charming they are. They are so well written! Thank you for keeping the discussion at such a civilized and enjoyable level -- even when I don't agree with you.

-- Russ Abbott
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019 at 9:44 AM <lrudolph at meganet.net<mailto:lrudolph at meganet.net>> wrote:
Frank writes:
> I would hate to have to demonstrate that a modern computer is an instance
> of a Turing Machine.  Among other things they usually have multiple
> processors as well as memory hierarchies.  But I suppose it could be done,
> theoretically.

First a passage from a chapter I contributed to a book edited by a
graduate student Nick knows (Zack Beckstead); I have cut out a bit in the
middle which aims at a different point not under consideration here.
===begin===
If talk of “machines” in the context of the human sciences seems out of
place, note that Turing (1936) actually introduces his “automatic machine”
as a formalization (thoroughly mathematical, though described in
suggestive mechanistic terms like “tape” and “scanning”) of “an idealized
*human* calculating agent” (Soare, 1996, p. 291; italics in the original),
called by Turing a “computer”. [...] As Turing remarks, “It is always
possible for the computer to break off from his work, to go away and
forget all about it, and later to come back and go on with it” (1936, p.
253). It seems to me that then it must also be “always possible for the
computer to break off” and never “come back” (in fact, this often happens
in the lives, and invariably upon the deaths, of non-idealized human
calculating agents).
===end===
Of course Turing's idealization of "an idealized *human* calculating
agent" also idealizes away the fact that human computers sometimes make
errors. A Turing machine doesn't make errors.  But both the processors and
the memory of a modern computer can, and *must* make errors (however
rarely, and however good the error-detection).  To at least that extent,
then, they are not *perfect* instantiations of Turing machines.  On the
other hand, that very fact about them makes them (in some sense) *more*
like (actual) human calculating agents.

So, Nick, why are you asking what Turing machines think, instead of what
modern computers think?  (Be careful how you answer that...)

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