Tristan Wibberley <tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
On 15/11/2025 11:59, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
Very clever people have attempted to show
inconsistencies in the mathematical foundations, without success. Less
clever people don't have a chance of doing so.
That's /much/ better politics but still sorely lacking. It leaves open
the avenue that the clever people did indeed show the inconsistencies to
themselves and to some others but they didn't show them to /you/.
<sigh> That's not the way the world works. Such results would have been published in a mathematical journal, and immediately attracted scrutiny.
Something like this did happen some years ago, I can't remember the
exact details, but I think it was a "proof" that integer arithmetic was inconsistent. An even cleverer mathematician (I think it might have
been Terence Tao) found flaws in the proof, and the paper was withdrawn.
That leaves open to the recipient of your message the possibility that
they're merely reading a message from the wrong person. Especially in
dead-usenet they can expect it to be true.
Also, it's /literally/ a mere appeal to received doctrine which is a
famous fallacy, one of the famous ones.
Not "received doctrine", but established knowledge. You don't call it "received doctrine" when you rely on the abilities of a car mechanic to service your car or a doctor to service you.
You're suggesting that mathematics is founded on something like
religion, and that one is free to reject these foundations as one is
free to reject a religion. Peter Olcott has done this and ended up with falsity and nonsense.
We normally only use that to make little children behave how we want
them too and we do it knowing that we must stop when they become
proper people.
That's a very cynical view of education. You seem to be suggesting it
would be better not to educate children, to avoid damaging them with "received doctrine".
We only continue to do it when we are unable to perceive that others
could be proper people.
This seems to be getting preposterous. Do you not regard young children
as "proper people"? I do.
Philosophers of computation do not take these foundations as given.
Is there such a thing as a "philosopher of computation"?
There used to be.
If so, name one.
Haskell Curry (deceased).
Whom I've heard of. Where is the evidence that he questioned the
foundations of mathematics?
I put it to you that philosophers do indeed accept mathematical
foundations. If not, the burden of proof is in your court.
The burden of proving to Olcott that Olcott is wrong is on whoever gives
a shit. If your posts are to prove to me then I'm offended by them. I'll
have you know I'm a proper person.
The foundations of mathematics are just as valid for you as for anybody
else, just as are the foundations of physics, or of engineering, or of medicine, or of many other fields.
You should respect expertise in these fields, not disparage the experts
as purveyors of "received doctrine".
--
Tristan Wibberley
On 11/16/2025 2:49 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:I put it to you that this has never happened. Tenured professors don't
Tristan WibberleyThat is not the way that the world works. A brilliant
<tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
On 15/11/2025 11:59, Alan Mackenzie wrote:<sigh> That's not the way the world works. Such results would have been
Very clever people have attempted to showThat's /much/ better politics but still sorely lacking. It leaves open
inconsistencies in the mathematical foundations, without success. Less >>>> clever people don't have a chance of doing so.
the avenue that the clever people did indeed show the inconsistencies to >>> themselves and to some others but they didn't show them to /you/.
published in a mathematical journal, and immediately attracted scrutiny.
tenured PhD computer science professor could have been
fired merely because he brought up the idea that the
halting problem might be wrong. No one bothered to look
at any of the words that he wrote. The fact that he
challenged conventional wisdom was considered blasphemy.
No, mathematicians can't tolerate cranks telling them that 2 + 2 = 5, orSomething like this did happen some years ago, I can't remember theNo one in any technical field: computer science,
exact details, but I think it was a "proof" that integer arithmetic was
inconsistent. An even cleverer mathematician (I think it might have
been Terence Tao) found flaws in the proof, and the paper was withdrawn.
That leaves open to the recipient of your message the possibility thatNot "received doctrine", but established knowledge. You don't call it
they're merely reading a message from the wrong person. Especially in
dead-usenet they can expect it to be true.
Also, it's /literally/ a mere appeal to received doctrine which is a
famous fallacy, one of the famous ones.
"received doctrine" when you rely on the abilities of a car mechanic to
service your car or a doctor to service you.
mathematics, and logic can tolerate challenges to
the foundational assumptions of their field.
Everything has been proven to work correctly withinIndeed, yes. One such foundational assumption is that if you drop
those foundational assumptions over many decades.
Only Philosophers in those technical fields canWrong. Philosophers are insufficiently competent in the technical fields
have sufficient open mindedness to objectively
consider alternatives to the foundational assumptions.
Everyone else essentially construes this as blasphemy.Not at all. I suspect more "everyone else"s construe such suggestions as
I don't know what you mean by God, here. As I've said already, suchYou're suggesting that mathematics is founded on something likeIt is the foundational assumptions that are taken to be
religion, and that one is free to reject these foundations as one is
free to reject a religion. Peter Olcott has done this and ended up with
falsity and nonsense.
the infallible word of God such that any and all challenges
to these foundational assumptions are treated like blasphemy
that tenured professors can get fired for.
------
Tristan Wibberley
Copyright 2025 Olcott "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius
hits a target no one else can see." Arthur Schopenhauer
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/17/2025 11:00 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/17/2025 7:21 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
In comp.theory olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/16/2025 4:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
In comp.theory olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
[ .... ]
That is not the way that the world works. A brilliant
tenured PhD computer science professor could have been
fired merely because he brought up the idea that the
halting problem might be wrong. No one bothered to look
at any of the words that he wrote. The fact that he
challenged conventional wisdom was considered blasphemy.
I put it to you that this has never happened. Tenured professors don't >>>>>>> go around asserting falsehoods in their own field.
It is not a falsehood.
I put it to you again, that no tenured professor has ever been sacked for >>>>> this reason.
https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/PHPhistory.pdf
What's that got to do with anything? There is no indication of anybody
being sacked in that article. Nor in the article cited in the other
reply you made to my last post.
You have to read it all the way through.
I have done now, more or less. Nobody got sacked.
What strikes me most about these reviews is that
they do not point out any error in my arguments
and proofs. They point out, with accompanying insults,
that I am making a claim that is contrary to the
current orthodoxy. I know that. They know that Turing
proved that the Halting Problem is incomputable; it's
in all the textbooks. So they know from my paper's
abstract that the paper is wrong. So they feel no
need to read my arguments carefully.
That sounds like another crank. Some of the reviewers did indeed point
out errors. Note the way he says "current orthodoxy", as though
mathematics were a question of fashion. It's not. I would bet a large amount of money on him not having a degree in mathematics, much like
yourself. Perhaps one or more of his reviewers did.
The Halting Theorem
is wholly a theorem of mathematics, and only secondarily about computer science.
One can understand the reviewers not wanting to get into the sort of fruitless discussions which happen here.
--
Copyright 2025 Olcott
My 28 year goal has been to make
"true on the basis of meaning" computable.
On 11/17/2025 11:29 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/17/2025 11:00 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/17/2025 7:21 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
In comp.theory olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/16/2025 4:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
In comp.theory olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
[ .... ]
That is not the way that the world works. A brilliant
tenured PhD computer science professor could have been
fired merely because he brought up the idea that the
halting problem might be wrong. No one bothered to look
at any of the words that he wrote. The fact that he
challenged conventional wisdom was considered blasphemy.
I put it to you that this has never happened. Tenured
professors don't go around asserting falsehoods in their own
field.
It is not a falsehood.
I put it to you again, that no tenured professor has ever been
sacked for this reason.
https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/PHPhistory.pdf
What's that got to do with anything? There is no indication of
anybody being sacked in that article. Nor in the article cited in
the other reply you made to my last post.
You have to read it all the way through.
I have done now, more or less. Nobody got sacked.
What strikes me most about these reviews is that
they do not point out any error in my arguments
and proofs. They point out, with accompanying insults,
that I am making a claim that is contrary to the
current orthodoxy. I know that. They know that Turing
proved that the Halting Problem is incomputable; it's
in all the textbooks. So they know from my paper's
abstract that the paper is wrong. So they feel no
need to read my arguments carefully.
That sounds like another crank. Some of the reviewers did indeed point
out errors. Note the way he says "current orthodoxy", as though
mathematics were a question of fashion. It's not. I would bet a large
amount of money on him not having a degree in mathematics, much like
yourself. Perhaps one or more of his reviewers did.
He is a tenured computer science professor
with a PhD in computer science.
His name was on the back cover of a journal
as an editor of the journal that turned him down
in a very insulting way.
Halting misconceived?
Bill Stoddart August 25, 2017
tenured computer science professor with a PhD in computer science. https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/euroforth/ef17/papers/stoddart.pdf
--The Halting Theorem
is wholly a theorem of mathematics, and only secondarily about computer
science.
One can understand the reviewers not wanting to get into the sort of
fruitless discussions which happen here.
--
Copyright 2025 Olcott
My 28 year goal has been to make
"true on the basis of meaning" computable.
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
[ .... ]
*you cannot begin to understand the nuances that this entails*
There's nothing particularly remarkable in what follows.
Turing machine deciders only compute a mapping from
their [finite string] inputs to an accept or reject
state on the basis that this [finite string] input
specifies or fails to specify a semantic or syntactic
property.
Yes. So what? You can omit the redundant "on the basis that ... or syntactic property" without any loss. You could omit the redundant
"only", too.
*This one single point makes your whole view a compete failure*
Perhaps you could elaborate just how that platitude makes my view a
failure. It's certainly not clear from what you've written.
----
Copyright 2025 Olcott
My 28 year goal has been to make
"true on the basis of meaning" computable.
On 11/17/25 3:31 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
dart200 <user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:
On 11/17/25 2:15 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
dart200 <user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:
[ .... ]
it kinda is on the verge of unquestionable orthodoxy given that
someone akin to the status of eric cannot start a proper academic
conversation on it
There is no proper academic conversation to be had over 2 + 2 = 4. It >>>> is firm, unassailable knowledge, unchallengeable. The Halting Theorem >>>> is of the same status, proven using the same methodology from the same >>>> fundamentals.
ur factual incorrect
basic addition is predicated on set theory,
the halting problem within computing is based on reckoning about turing
machines,
literally read turing's paper /on computable numbers/ it never mentions
elementary set theory
You've twisted my statements into an interpretation they were never meant
to bare.
u keep talking about some halting theorem as proven using the same fundamentals as 2+2... when that is just not the case
computing doesn't have the same fundamentals as set theory. a turing
machine does not derive justification from set theory, it is a self- justifying construct
When somebody ignorant of this tries to start a "proper academic
conversation" about the Halting Theorem, it is only right that the said >>>> conversation is nipped in the bud. When somebody knowledgeable does
this, it can only be construed as disparagement and insult of the whole >>>> body of mathematicians.
ur elevating math into the realm of religion my dude,
Not at all. I am a graduate mathematician, and thus knowledgeable in a
way that the general public isn't. I respect mathematical researchers,
who are at least as far ahead of me as I am of you. I expect and require >> due respect for this expertise, just as I defer to the expertise of
others, no matter in what field.
Religion doesn't come into it.
you say that, but then you treat the fundamentals as unquestionable... that's how religious operate dude
heck even set theory is incomplete: the continuum hypothesis exists
outside of current set theory
"but all axiomatic systems are incomplete" .... yeah, yeah, yeah ...
godel does not specify *how much* incomplete a system is
you can't just pull godel out of ass every time you encounter a proposal that ur fundimentals can't explain, because godel does not specify
limits of how complete a system can be beyond one very specific claim
[ .... ]
--
a burnt out swe investigating into why our tooling doesn't involve
basic semantic proofs like halting analysis
please excuse my pseudo-pyscript,
~ nick
On 11/17/2025 5:38 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
[ .... ]
*you cannot begin to understand the nuances that this entails*
There's nothing particularly remarkable in what follows.
Turing machine deciders only compute a mapping from
their [finite string] inputs to an accept or reject
state on the basis that this [finite string] input
specifies or fails to specify a semantic or syntactic
property.
Yes. So what? You can omit the redundant "on the basis that ... or
syntactic property" without any loss. You could omit the redundant
"only", too.
*This one single point makes your whole view a compete failure*
Perhaps you could elaborate just how that platitude makes my view a
failure. It's certainly not clear from what you've written.
The above that I formed myself has key details that
are simply assumed away from the conventional way
this is stated:
In computability theory, the halting problem is
the problem of determining, from a description
of an arbitrary computer program and an input,
whether the program will finish running, or
continue to run forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
Makes sure to not take into account that an input
that calls its own decider specifies a different
sequence of steps than this same input to a decider
that it does not call.
You can disbelieve that DD simulated by HHH does not
specify recursive simulation the same way that you
can disbelieve that 2 + 3 = 5.
On 2025-11-17, olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/17/2025 5:38 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
[ .... ]
*you cannot begin to understand the nuances that this entails*
There's nothing particularly remarkable in what follows.
Turing machine deciders only compute a mapping from
their [finite string] inputs to an accept or reject
state on the basis that this [finite string] input
specifies or fails to specify a semantic or syntactic
property.
Yes. So what? You can omit the redundant "on the basis that ... or
syntactic property" without any loss. You could omit the redundant
"only", too.
*This one single point makes your whole view a compete failure*
Perhaps you could elaborate just how that platitude makes my view a
failure. It's certainly not clear from what you've written.
The above that I formed myself has key details that
are simply assumed away from the conventional way
this is stated:
In computability theory, the halting problem is
the problem of determining, from a description
of an arbitrary computer program and an input,
whether the program will finish running, or
continue to run forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
Makes sure to not take into account that an input
that calls its own decider specifies a different
sequence of steps than this same input to a decider
that it does not call.
The input D does not "call its own decider".
It incorporates an implementation of a particular decider algorithm,
appiles it on itself, and then behaves contrary to its output.
You can disbelieve that DD simulated by HHH does not
specify recursive simulation the same way that you
can disbelieve that 2 + 3 = 5.
It does! But (it has been shown with code, even, using
your own framework!) that a recursive simulation can consist
of a regenerating progression of /terminating/ simulations.
It is possible that generation of new simulations never stops;
but the simulations themselves terminate. (It's also possible that they don't terminate.)
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/17/2025 6:01 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
[ Newsgroups: trimmed ]
In comp.theory olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/17/2025 5:38 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
olcott <polcott333@gmail.com> wrote:
[ .... ]
*you cannot begin to understand the nuances that this entails*
There's nothing particularly remarkable in what follows.
Turing machine deciders only compute a mapping from
their [finite string] inputs to an accept or reject
state on the basis that this [finite string] input
specifies or fails to specify a semantic or syntactic
property.
Yes. So what? You can omit the redundant "on the basis that ... or >>>>> syntactic property" without any loss. You could omit the redundant
"only", too.
*This one single point makes your whole view a compete failure*
Perhaps you could elaborate just how that platitude makes my view a
failure. It's certainly not clear from what you've written.
The above that I formed myself has key details that
are simply assumed away from the conventional way
this is stated:
In computability theory, the halting problem is
the problem of determining, from a description
of an arbitrary computer program and an input,
whether the program will finish running, or
continue to run forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
Makes sure to not take into account that an input
that calls its own decider specifies a different
sequence of steps than this same input to a decider
that it does not call.
It does indeed so make sure, since taking those irrelevant details into
account would change the nature of the problem, making it less tractable.
In other words you are too fucking stupid to
recognize what is essentially the infinite
recursion behavior pattern. It that it?
No, not at all. You shouldn't be so gratuitously offensive. It doesn't
add anything to the discussion.
I was talking at an abstract level, beyond your understanding. When such happens, you should just drop out of the conversation rather than sully
it with obscenities.
--
Copyright 2025 Olcott
My 28 year goal has been to make
"true on the basis of meaning" computable.
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