And finally, as a general note, if you find that your proof that human beings can solve the halting problem can’t be made formal and concise, you might consider the possibility that your intuition is just plain wrong.
I didn’t say that it can’t be made formal. I said that the formalism isn’t concise enough for one blog comment. Most normal journal/conference papers are about ten pages long, so that’s the standard of concision you should use for a claimed formalism in theoretical CS.
And indeed, I think I can fit my formalism, when it’s done, into ten pages.
If anyone wants a go, here’s a Turing machine to try on. Does it halt?
.i=4.a=False.while not a:. a=True. for j in range(1,i):. k=i-j. b=False. for p in range(2,j):. b=b or j%p==0. for p in range(2,k):. b=b or k%p==0. a=a and b
I didn’t say that it can’t be made formal. I said that the formalism isn’t concise enough for one blog comment. Most normal journal/conference papers are about ten pages long, so that’s the standard of concision you should use for a claimed formalism in theoretical CS.
And indeed, I think I can fit my formalism, when it’s done, into ten pages.
If anyone wants a go, here’s a Turing machine to try on. Does it halt?
.i=4.a=False.while not a:. a=True. for j in range(1,i):. k=i-j. b=False. for p in range(2,j):. b=b or j%p==0. for p in range(2,k):. b=b or k%p==0. a=a and b
Written in python for the convenience of coders.