Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine Not Universal

Fishbat writes "In a cutting message to the Foundations of Mathematics mailing list, Stanford's Vaughan Pratt has pointed out an elementary mistake in the recently announced proof that Wolfram's (2,3) machine is universal." Update: 10/30 04:18 GMT by KD : Ed Pegg Jr. from Wolfram Research points to this response to Dr. Pratt's note, which has been submitted to the FoM mailing list but has not yet appeared there due to moderation.

Comments

"from the whoa-not-so-fast-there-big-fella dept"

[ZorbaTHut]

Yeah, speaking of that . . .

"Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine Not Universal". What? Where'd you get that? This issue doesn't prove anything of the sort - it merely shows that this proof is invalid. It may be universal, it may not, but we still don't know.

So, ironically - whoa, not so fast there big editor.

Bad romantic consequence

[Hao Wu]

I hope that this young man's girlfriend stands by him. So many women would be driven away from an otherwise suitable boyfriend who is skilled at the maths.

Re:Proven?

[EvanED]

Apparently some Slashdot editors have still to defeat the gargantuan misteries of propositional calculus...

Or, you know, English.

I rate this proof

[MillionthMonkey]

(Score: 2,3 Possibly Informative)

Re:The Filter

[HeadlessNotAHorseman]

Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine Not Universal
HOLLYWOOD - In a shock move, MGM has undercut Universal in its bid for the movie rights to Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine. Insiders had predicted that Universal would make the deal to build on the phenomenal success of Wolfram's 2,2 Turing Machine, but it has since become apparent that Universal failed to include an option for all sequels in the original contract. The exact figure offered by MGM is unknown, but is believed to be approximately x + y, and we can confirm that y is a finite number. More details will follow.