James Rogers <jamesr@best.com> Wrote:
> More precisely, you can calculate the limits of predictability for finite
> state machines, given any certain amount of memory to work with. All
> finite state machines are predictable,
No. If I start a finite Turing machine with a tape of X boxes running the
program I mentioned before nobody knows of a shortcut to predict if it
will stop before it reaches X or not, and it's possible nobody ever will know
because such a shortcut (a proof) does not exist for this problem and never will.
You can't even assign probabilities as to what the likely outcome will be, we're
totally clueless as to its behavior. The only way to know what this Turing machine
will do is to set it in motion and watch, sort of like people.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:37 MDT