James Rogers <jamesr@best.com>
> As long as the predictive error rate of the predictor is *non-zero*, which
>will always be the case, then certainty will approach zero as the function
>projects farther and farther into the future.
Not necessarily so, if I have a proof then I can know for certain if the machine
will terminate or not; but for some things we have no proof and for some things
we will never have a proof.
>but it is possible to predict the next sequential result with excellent accuracy
>whether the machine terminates or not.
As I said before, it's not a prediction if the event already happened. You have no
shortcut, that is you have no proof, you've got to work things out the same way the
machine does, so there is no fundamental reason why you can figure out what the
machine will do next before the machine itself does; you might as well just watch it
and see what it does. Watching is not predicting. It would be different if you knew
the Goldbach conjecture was true, or untrue, but you don't.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:38 MDT