Related papers: Can we debug the Universe?
A universal Turing machine is a powerful concept - a single device can compute any function that is computable. A universal spin model, similarly, is a class of physical systems whose low energy behavior simulates that of any spin system.…
As far as algorithmic thinking is bound by symbolic paper-and-pencil operations, the Church-Turing thesis appears to hold. But is physics, and even more so, is the human mind, bound by symbolic paper-and-pencil operations? What about the…
We revisit the question (most famously) initiated by Turing: can human intelligence be completely modeled by a Turing machine? We show that the answer is \emph{no}, assuming a certain weak soundness hypothesis. More specifically we show…
We show that Church's thesis, the axiom stating that all functions on the naturals are computable, does not hold in the cubical assemblies model of cubical type theory. We show that nevertheless Church's thesis is consistent with univalent…
This text presents the research field of natural/unconventional computing as it appears in the book COMPUTING NATURE. The articles discussed consist a selection of works from the Symposium on Natural Computing at AISB-IACAP (British Society…
The Church-Turing thesis states that any sufficiently powerful computational model which captures the notion of algorithm is computationally equivalent to the Turing machine. This equivalence usually holds both at a computability level and…
On the real numbers, the notions of a semi-decidable relation and that of an effectively enumerable relation differ. The second only seems to be adequate to express, in an algorithmic way, non deterministic physical theories, where…
The notion of computability is stable (i.e. independent of the choice of an indexing) over infinite-dimensional vector spaces provided they have a finite "tensorial dimension". Such vector spaces with a finite tensorial dimension permit to…
The quantum-Extended Church-Turing thesis is a principle of physics as well as computer science. It asserts that the laws of physics will prevent the construction of a machine that can efficiently determine the results of any calculation…
The conceptual relation between the measurability of quantum mechanical observables and the computability of numerical functions is re-examined. A new formulation is given for the notion of measurability with finite precision in order to…
Two aspects of the physical side of the Church-Turing thesis are discussed. The first issue is a variant of the Eleatic argument against motion, dealing with Zeno squeezed time cycles of computers. The second argument reviews the issue of…
We report a new limitation on the ability of physical systems to perform computation -- one that is based on generalizing the notion of memory, or storage space, available to the system to perform the computation. Roughly, we define memory…
Provided that there is no theoretical frame for complex engineered systems (CES) as yet, this paper claims that bio-inspired engineering can help provide such a frame. Within CES bio-inspired systems play a key role. The disclosure from…
The present paper introduces a novel notion of `(effective) computability', called viability, of strategies in game semantics in an intrinsic (i.e., without recourse to the standard Church-Turing computability), non-inductive and…
"Church's thesis" ($\mathsf{CT}$) as an axiom in constructive logic states that every total function of type $\mathbb{N} \to \mathbb{N}$ is computable, i.e. definable in a model of computation. $\mathsf{CT}$ is inconsistent in both…
When we want to predict the future, we compute it from what we know about the present. Specifically, we take a mathematical representation of observed reality, plug it into some dynamical equations, and then map the time-evolved result back…
The paper puts into discussion the concept of universality, in particular for structures not of the power of Turing computability. The question arises if for such structures a universal structure of the same kind exists or not. For that the…
In this first of two papers, strong limits on the accuracy of physical computation are established. First it is proven that there cannot be a physical computer C to which one can pose any and all computational tasks concerning the physical…
In this paper we prove that given a black box assumed to generate bits of a given non-recursive real $\Omega$ there is no computable decision procedure generating sequences of decisions such that if the output is indeed $\Omega$ the process…
When can a model of a physical system be regarded as computable? We provide the definition of a computable physical model to answer this question. The connection between our definition and Kreisel's notion of a mechanistic theory is…