Related papers: Undecidable problems: a sampler
We discuss the question of if and how undecidability might be translatable into physics, in particular with respect to prediction and description, as well as to complementarity games.
The study of undecidability in problems arising from physics has experienced a renewed interest, mainly in connection with quantum information problems. The goal of this review is to survey this recent development. After a historical…
In the literature two notions of the word problem for a variety occur. A variety has a decidable word problem if every finitely presented algebra in the variety has a decidable word problem. It has a uniformly decidable word problem if…
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
Using a novel rewriting problem, we show that several natural decision problems about finite automata are undecidable (i.e., recursively unsolvable). In contrast, we also prove three related problems are decidable. We apply one result to…
In this work, we show that very natural, apparently simple problems in quantum measurement theory can be undecidable even if their classical analogues are decidable. Undecidability hence appears as a genuine quantum property here. Formally,…
One main goal of argumentation theory is to evaluate arguments and to determine whether they should be accepted or rejected. When there is no clear answer, a third option, being undecided, has to be taken into account. Indecision is often…
Modal logics are widely used in computer science. The complexity of their satisfiability problems has been an active field of research since the 1970s. We prove that even very "simple" modal logics can be undecidable: We show that there is…
Model uncertainty is a crucial issue in statistics, econometrics and machine learning, yet its definition remains ambiguous and is subject to various interpretations in the literature. So far, there has not been a universally accepted…
This paper presents a theory of systemic undecidability, reframing incomputability as a structural property of systems rather than a localized feature of specific functions or problems. We define a notion of causal embedding and prove a…
In a real expert system, one may have unreliable, unconfident, conflicting estimates of the value for a particular parameter. It is important for decision making that the information present in this aggregate somehow find its way into use.…
A variety of physical unknowables are discussed. Provable lack of physical omniscience, omnipredictability and omnipotence is derived by reduction to problems which are known to be recursively unsolvable. "Chaotic" symbolic dynamical…
We derive axiomatically the probability function that should be used to make decisions given any form of underlying uncertainty.
Recent work has examined how undecidable problems can arise in quantum information science. We augment this by introducing three new undecidable problems stated in terms of tensor networks. These relate to ideas of Penrose about the…
The study of word equations (or the existential theory of equations over free monoids) is a central topic in mathematics and theoretical computer science. The problem of deciding whether a given word equation has a solution was shown to be…
We study relationship among versions of the Knapsack Problem where variables take values in Z and the number of them is fixed. In particular, we construct a finitely presented group where the problem of solvability of exponential equations…
The notion of uncertainty is of major importance in machine learning and constitutes a key element of machine learning methodology. In line with the statistical tradition, uncertainty has long been perceived as almost synonymous with…
Here we continue with the ideas expressed in "On the strangeness of quantum mechanics" aiming to demonstrate more concretely how this philosophical outlook might be used as a key for resolving the measurement problem. We will address in…
This is a survey of results on definability and undefinability in models of arithmetic. The goal is to present a stark difference between undefinability results in the standard model and much stronger versions about expansions of…
In this paper, we consider iterative propositional calculi, which are finite sets of propositional formulas together with the rules of modus ponens and weak substitution (when formula being substituted must be already inferred). We…