Related papers: The Halting Paradox
Computing is a high-level process of a physical system. Recent interest in non-standard computing systems, including quantum and biological computers, has brought this physical basis of computing to the forefront. There has been, however,…
A proof is one of the most important concepts of mathematics. However, there is a striking difference between how a proof is defined in theory and how it is used in practice. This puts the unique status of mathematics as exact science into…
People solve different problems and know that some of them are simple, some are complex and some insoluble. The main goal of this work is to develop a mathematical theory of algorithmic complexity for problems. This theory is aimed at…
Recent proposal for counterfactual computation [Hosten et al., Nature, 439, 949 (2006)] is analyzed. It is argued that the method does not provide counterfactual computation for all possible outcomes. The explanation involves a novel…
We discuss views about whether the universe can be rationally comprehended, starting with Plato, then Leibniz, and then the views of some distinguished scientists of the previous century. Based on this, we defend the thesis that…
In considering the reliability of numerical programs, it is normal to "limit our study to the semantics dealing with numerical precision" (Martel, 2005). On the other hand, there is a great deal of work on the reliability of programs that…
The problem of attempting to learn the mapping between data and labels is the crux of any machine learning task. It is, therefore, of interest to the machine learning community on practical as well as theoretical counts to consider the…
Fixed point iterations are known to generate chaos, for some values in their parameter range. It is an established fact that Turing Machines are fixed point iterations. However, as these Machines operate in integer space, the standard…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
Due to common misconceptions about the Church-Turing thesis, it has been widely assumed that the Turing machine provides an upper bound on what is computable. This is not so. The new field of hypercomputation studies models of computation…
The true process that generated data cannot be determined when multiple explanations are possible. Prediction requires a model of the probability that a process, chosen randomly from the set of candidate explanations, generates some future…
This article presents a theoretical investigation of computation beyond the Turing barrier from emergent behavior in distributed systems. In particular, we present an algorithmic network that is a mathematical model of a networked…
We consider the thesis that an arithmetical relation, which holds for any, given, assignment of natural numbers to its free variables, is Turing-decidable if, and only if, it is the standard representation of a PA-provable formula. We show…
The apparently trifling unexpected hanging paradox has generated an enormous philosophical literature. We introduce the mathematician to this literature, paying special attention to aspects that involve nontrivial mathematics. This xxx…
We show that there is a point on a computable arc that does not belong to any computable rectifiable curve. We also show that there is a point on a computable rectifiable curve with computable length that does not belong to any computable…
The paradoxes of thermodynamics and statistical physics are unavoidable in the study of physical paradoxes because of their importance at the time they came to be as well as the frequency of their appearance in historical studies of…
I discuss some problems related to extreme mathematical realism, focusing on a recently proposed "shut-up-and-calculate" approach to physics (arXiv:0704.0646, arXiv:0709.4024). I offer arguments for a moderate alternative, the essence of…
This paper shows that, even at the most basic level, the parallel, countable branching and uncountable branching recurrences of Computability Logic (see http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~giorgi/cl.html) validate different principles.
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…
The Collatz hypothesis is a theorem of the algorithmic theory of natural numbers. We prove the (algorithmic) formula that expresses the halting property of Collatz algorithm. The observation that Collatz's theorem cannot be proved in any…