It doesn't have to "figure out" anything... if the sufficient state to predict the future exists, then you could at least theoretically use some alleged "magical" black box to say whatever a future state is going to be based on the universe's current state, and just have the deterministic turing machine query that. My point is that when the turing machine is programmed to do the opposite of whatever the black box says is going to happen, absolutely no amount of information, even an infinite amount, will actually ever be sufficient for such a black box to actually correctly predict the future. If insufficient information to predict the future exists at the present time, then the universe cannot be deterministic.
In fact, the *only* real reasons that I know of to rigidly hold onto the notion that the universe is deterministic are either out of a subjective sense of aesthetic appeal (but bear in mind that while a deterministic universe cannot contain any non-deterministic components, even a universe with non-deterministic components can still have deterministic components inside of it as well, so the aesthetic appeal of determinism for many practical purposes is not actually lost in a non-deterministic universe), or out of a sense of a no less subjective religious (or anti-religious) world-view that is actually simply founded on the principles of materialistic determinism, and is being adhered to out of a sense of blind-faith dogma.
Depends on how strict the coding standards at the company are... comments left in the software that do not describe what the code does may be considered a violation of such standards, and I've worked at game studios where doing such things was technically a fireable offense, but would definitely at least earn a stern warning to not ever do it again.
But if the instruction table says to move left when an alleged so-called analysis of the future says it will move right, or vice versa, assuming that analysis of the future were a magical black box, it will still do one or the other, quite predictably, as a deterministic system should, but it will still always produce a result inconsistent with that prediction, which shows that the future cannot be predicted with 100% certainty from a given state... where determinism suggests that everything about the future *CAN* be determined from its current state. Whether such information were even knowable in the first place is irrelevant, no quantity of information (even an infinite amount) can ever be sufficient to accurately predict the result, which means that the universe cannot be wholly deterministic, and thus contains at least some non-deterministic components.
Cycling isn't walking. It might be unpowered (save for human muscles), but its definitely not walking... if you are going to argue that moving around in this unpowered exoskeleton isn't really walking either, then you might have a point.
You seem to be lumping together the information necessary to make a prediction and the results of that prediction. Just because you have the inputs, and could make a prediction, doesn't mean you have the results of the predictions instantly, with no cost of resources.
I'm suggesting that with such an experiment, it wouldn't matter how much resources it required... even if the amount of resources were infinite, the results of the prediction would *always* be wrong, because the experiment is explicitly designed to contradict whatever is to be expected for its output. This thought experiment shows that it can be possible for there to exist insufficient information to predict the future, and so it follows that the universe cannot be wholly deterministic.
And there is, in fact, no compelling reason beyond so-called aesthetic appeal *why* the universe needs to have deterministic behavior anyways.... further, the fact that it might not be entirely predictable does not mean that deterministic systems cannot exist at all, so we don't need to lose our precious determinism entirely even if we accept that the universe is, at its core, inherently unpredictable.
The behavior of a halting machine is completely deterministic
Really? What happens if you ask it to tell you if a function will terminate when the function does the opposite of whatever the halting machine says the function will do?
Still think it's deterministic?
The behavior of a halting machine can only be deterministic for certain types of functions.
I equate deterministic with predictable... that's all.... It seems reasonable to me to conclude that if one has information at hand, this information can be utilized to take a course of action. I suggest implementing this process within a deterministic system such as a theoretical computing machine to illustrate that there is no possible way for the system to fail to perform its function However, since there can never exist enough information about the future at the time that such information is being analyzed to exclude that possibility from occurring, the universe cannot be entirely deterministic, and there is no possible way for it to be... just as certainly as if a black-box halting problem solver would be a non-deterministic system as well.
The halting problem requires a deterministic system, it does not require that the universe itself to be deterministic. The universe encompasses everything that ever was, is, or will be... including all deterministic systems. My main point is that in a deterministic universe you should be able to contrive a deterministic thought experiment which will always be able to correctly predict the outcome of the experiment, but if you design the experiment so that its output is always the opposite of whatever was predicted, then it becomes evident that there can never be sufficient information at the beginning of the experiment to predict its conclusion, and if the current state of the universe is not sufficient to predict a future state, then the universe is not deterministic.
A universe being nondeterministic does not mean it is impossible to construct smaller entirely deterministic systems within that framework... "if A then B" can be entirely determistic, even if the universe which runs it is not, if no aspects of the universe's non-determinism impact the execution of the statement. However, a determistic universe means that it *IS* impossible to construct a non-deterministic system. above, I show how such a system can be constructed, however, which suggests the universe cannot be determistic (even though it may possess many deterministic qualities).
Again, the ability for the agent to gather the information that would predict its outcome is superfluous... if the the universe is deterministic, then the information to predict the state exists, but in this extremely simple experiment, it is illustrated that not even an infinite amount of information can be sufficient to predict the outcome of the experiment because it contains an inherent contradiction, and if information about the universe's current state is insufficient to predict a future state of *ANY* experiment, then the universe is non-deterministic.
I didn't put the word ever in there because I didn't mean ever... I meant the results of *THIS* test, and no other. I don't care what happens any other time I run the test, I want to know the results of *THIS* test. If the universe is deterministic, then at any point in time, then it must contain sufficient information in its state to predict some future state, and that information is the only input to the algorithm. The fact that any such agent which tries to examine such a state may never stop trying to gather information about the current state to make the prediction is irrelevant... if the universe is genuinely deterministic, then the state exists and is sufficient to predict the universe's future state, even if it takes an infinite amount of time to actually do... and the definition of determinism itself is sufficient to illustrate the point.
And my point is that it is, by definition, impossible for any current state at the point in time that we try to predict the outcome of even that single experiment to correctly predict its outcome, and without such state, the universe cannot be deterministic either.
The halting problem only exhibits the trait... you don't need to look infinitely far ahead to make a conclusion as long as the experiment conclusion is truly binary.
As I said.... "if this program will take branch A after executing this statement then take branch B, else take branch A" where branches A and B are mutually exclusive is an extremely simple example of a system where no amount of information will be sufficient to predict its conclusion, and if an experiment can be derived whose outcome cannot be predicted by any amount of information, then the universe cannot be deterministic either.
You might not be able to predict what the machine does in the infinite future
You don't even need to predict infinitely far ahead... for example:
if this program's else clause will execute, then take branch A, else take branch B.
Regardless of what information you allegedly have about the program's future state will be incorrect, so it is trivially provable that no amount of information can be sufficient to even predict the future in a simple closed experiment such as this, and if even a single experiment can be designed where the result is not predictable, the universe cannot be deterministic.
The existence of the Halting Problem disproves determinism.
If the universe were deterministic, then it follows that with sufficient information about the universe one could theoretically predict the state of the universe at any given point in the future. However, if one took this information about the universe to predict what the outcome of some particular binary state in a closed experiment would be, and were to formulate the conditions of the experiment so that the outcome of it would always be the opposite of whatever the information about the future appeared to reveal about it (eg, if this program will terminate then loop forever, else stop), it becomes evident that no amount of information can ever be sufficient to actually predict the future with 100% confidence, and so the universe cannot actually be deterministic.
An interesting side effect of the universe being non-deterministic is that may allow for the existence of certain metaphysical concepts such as free-will, although a non-deterministic universe does not necessarily prove that they exist, it seems to at least makes such things plausibly consistent with reality.
All very well and good for roads, but how does that extend to things like public sidewalks, bicycle paths, or usage of any other kind of public area. for which regular maintenance needs to be done?
As I was perhaps a bit too obscurely attempting to point out, that these people who were offended by the remarks on the project are reacting only in the way that society has programmed them, because our society protects people against abuse to such a degree that they can often be incapable of even recognizing it when it actually happens, or how to tell the difference between actual abuse and something like what is happening with this project. I'm not saying that protecting people against real abuse is bad.... I'm saying that as long as we intend to keep doing so, then we need to keep expecting that there are going to be people reacting like this, because that is what people are being told is the norm.
Of course.... I am suggesting that society has created the infrustructure that allows such views to flourish.... we try and protect people from abuse, but in so doing, we may stop people from being able to recognize such abuse when it actually happens (because they are so protected from it), and in turn be able to tell the difference between actual abuse and what is going on with this software project.
It's less that the people who are offended are being immature than that they are just reacting in the manner that modern society has programmed them to behave.
Agreed, but in practice there will always exist a confidence level somewhere below 100% where the confidence still outweighs any concerns they have about their security. Requiring me to have a backdoor in my computers or network for *ANYONE* that I do not personally administrate would put my confidence level somewhere in the vicinity of 0.
100% confidence in all circumstances is not required... and as you point out, it is actually useless. Anything that simply approaches 100% for all practical purposes is actually entirely sufficient.
Just because a person is not given the opportunity to learn something does not make them an idiot or particularly immature if they complain about something. it make them ignorant, but there is a pretty big difference
My point is that the kinds of rights that are given to employees in the workplace or to the general public on many popular social networks has probably created an expectation for many people that such rights actually extend to absolutely every avenue of society and practice. The fact that they may be wrong about this doesn't necessarily make them immature, except to the extent that laws that might protect people from abuse might also keep them from being able to learn how to recognize what such abuse actually is, and the difference between that and what is happening with this project.
... to implement whatever local security policies I want that will keep anyone from hacking my computer, including the government, I don't think I'm liable to waste my time worrying about this.
I'll really start to worry if or when I am legally required to install a backdoor onto my network and computers in order to get any online connectivity at all.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't have to "figure out" anything... if the sufficient state to predict the future exists, then you could at least theoretically use some alleged "magical" black box to say whatever a future state is going to be based on the universe's current state, and just have the deterministic turing machine query that. My point is that when the turing machine is programmed to do the opposite of whatever the black box says is going to happen, absolutely no amount of information, even an infinite amount, will actually ever be sufficient for such a black box to actually correctly predict the future. If insufficient information to predict the future exists at the present time, then the universe cannot be deterministic.
In fact, the *only* real reasons that I know of to rigidly hold onto the notion that the universe is deterministic are either out of a subjective sense of aesthetic appeal (but bear in mind that while a deterministic universe cannot contain any non-deterministic components, even a universe with non-deterministic components can still have deterministic components inside of it as well, so the aesthetic appeal of determinism for many practical purposes is not actually lost in a non-deterministic universe), or out of a sense of a no less subjective religious (or anti-religious) world-view that is actually simply founded on the principles of materialistic determinism, and is being adhered to out of a sense of blind-faith dogma.
Depends on how strict the coding standards at the company are... comments left in the software that do not describe what the code does may be considered a violation of such standards, and I've worked at game studios where doing such things was technically a fireable offense, but would definitely at least earn a stern warning to not ever do it again.
... for putting in any unauthorized code, this tends to dissuade the programmers from independently putting any such code into the product.
But if the instruction table says to move left when an alleged so-called analysis of the future says it will move right, or vice versa, assuming that analysis of the future were a magical black box, it will still do one or the other, quite predictably, as a deterministic system should, but it will still always produce a result inconsistent with that prediction, which shows that the future cannot be predicted with 100% certainty from a given state... where determinism suggests that everything about the future *CAN* be determined from its current state. Whether such information were even knowable in the first place is irrelevant, no quantity of information (even an infinite amount) can ever be sufficient to accurately predict the result, which means that the universe cannot be wholly deterministic, and thus contains at least some non-deterministic components.
Cycling isn't walking. It might be unpowered (save for human muscles), but its definitely not walking... if you are going to argue that moving around in this unpowered exoskeleton isn't really walking either, then you might have a point.
I'm suggesting that with such an experiment, it wouldn't matter how much resources it required... even if the amount of resources were infinite, the results of the prediction would *always* be wrong, because the experiment is explicitly designed to contradict whatever is to be expected for its output. This thought experiment shows that it can be possible for there to exist insufficient information to predict the future, and so it follows that the universe cannot be wholly deterministic.
And there is, in fact, no compelling reason beyond so-called aesthetic appeal *why* the universe needs to have deterministic behavior anyways.... further, the fact that it might not be entirely predictable does not mean that deterministic systems cannot exist at all, so we don't need to lose our precious determinism entirely even if we accept that the universe is, at its core, inherently unpredictable.
Really? What happens if you ask it to tell you if a function will terminate when the function does the opposite of whatever the halting machine says the function will do?
Still think it's deterministic?
The behavior of a halting machine can only be deterministic for certain types of functions.
I equate deterministic with predictable... that's all.... It seems reasonable to me to conclude that if one has information at hand, this information can be utilized to take a course of action. I suggest implementing this process within a deterministic system such as a theoretical computing machine to illustrate that there is no possible way for the system to fail to perform its function However, since there can never exist enough information about the future at the time that such information is being analyzed to exclude that possibility from occurring, the universe cannot be entirely deterministic, and there is no possible way for it to be... just as certainly as if a black-box halting problem solver would be a non-deterministic system as well.
The halting problem requires a deterministic system, it does not require that the universe itself to be deterministic. The universe encompasses everything that ever was, is, or will be... including all deterministic systems. My main point is that in a deterministic universe you should be able to contrive a deterministic thought experiment which will always be able to correctly predict the outcome of the experiment, but if you design the experiment so that its output is always the opposite of whatever was predicted, then it becomes evident that there can never be sufficient information at the beginning of the experiment to predict its conclusion, and if the current state of the universe is not sufficient to predict a future state, then the universe is not deterministic.
Deterministic machines build by man don't encompass everything, the way the universe does.
A universe being nondeterministic does not mean it is impossible to construct smaller entirely deterministic systems within that framework... "if A then B" can be entirely determistic, even if the universe which runs it is not, if no aspects of the universe's non-determinism impact the execution of the statement. However, a determistic universe means that it *IS* impossible to construct a non-deterministic system. above, I show how such a system can be constructed, however, which suggests the universe cannot be determistic (even though it may possess many deterministic qualities).
Again, the ability for the agent to gather the information that would predict its outcome is superfluous... if the the universe is deterministic, then the information to predict the state exists, but in this extremely simple experiment, it is illustrated that not even an infinite amount of information can be sufficient to predict the outcome of the experiment because it contains an inherent contradiction, and if information about the universe's current state is insufficient to predict a future state of *ANY* experiment, then the universe is non-deterministic.
I didn't put the word ever in there because I didn't mean ever... I meant the results of *THIS* test, and no other. I don't care what happens any other time I run the test, I want to know the results of *THIS* test. If the universe is deterministic, then at any point in time, then it must contain sufficient information in its state to predict some future state, and that information is the only input to the algorithm. The fact that any such agent which tries to examine such a state may never stop trying to gather information about the current state to make the prediction is irrelevant... if the universe is genuinely deterministic, then the state exists and is sufficient to predict the universe's future state, even if it takes an infinite amount of time to actually do... and the definition of determinism itself is sufficient to illustrate the point.
And my point is that it is, by definition, impossible for any current state at the point in time that we try to predict the outcome of even that single experiment to correctly predict its outcome, and without such state, the universe cannot be deterministic either.
As I said.... "if this program will take branch A after executing this statement then take branch B, else take branch A" where branches A and B are mutually exclusive is an extremely simple example of a system where no amount of information will be sufficient to predict its conclusion, and if an experiment can be derived whose outcome cannot be predicted by any amount of information, then the universe cannot be deterministic either.
You don't even need to predict infinitely far ahead... for example:
if this program's else clause will execute, then take branch A, else take branch B.
Regardless of what information you allegedly have about the program's future state will be incorrect, so it is trivially provable that no amount of information can be sufficient to even predict the future in a simple closed experiment such as this, and if even a single experiment can be designed where the result is not predictable, the universe cannot be deterministic.
The existence of the Halting Problem disproves determinism.
If the universe were deterministic, then it follows that with sufficient information about the universe one could theoretically predict the state of the universe at any given point in the future. However, if one took this information about the universe to predict what the outcome of some particular binary state in a closed experiment would be, and were to formulate the conditions of the experiment so that the outcome of it would always be the opposite of whatever the information about the future appeared to reveal about it (eg, if this program will terminate then loop forever, else stop), it becomes evident that no amount of information can ever be sufficient to actually predict the future with 100% confidence, and so the universe cannot actually be deterministic.
An interesting side effect of the universe being non-deterministic is that may allow for the existence of certain metaphysical concepts such as free-will, although a non-deterministic universe does not necessarily prove that they exist, it seems to at least makes such things plausibly consistent with reality.
.... this story is unfortunately somewhat believable.
Or trademark issue? Nintendo is using the DMCA here, but if the work contains none of Nintendo's code, then why would copyright apply?
Certainly I can see trademarks being an issue here, and it's only right that Nintendo try and put a stop to it.
All very well and good for roads, but how does that extend to things like public sidewalks, bicycle paths, or usage of any other kind of public area. for which regular maintenance needs to be done?
As I was perhaps a bit too obscurely attempting to point out, that these people who were offended by the remarks on the project are reacting only in the way that society has programmed them, because our society protects people against abuse to such a degree that they can often be incapable of even recognizing it when it actually happens, or how to tell the difference between actual abuse and something like what is happening with this project. I'm not saying that protecting people against real abuse is bad.... I'm saying that as long as we intend to keep doing so, then we need to keep expecting that there are going to be people reacting like this, because that is what people are being told is the norm.
Of course.... I am suggesting that society has created the infrustructure that allows such views to flourish.... we try and protect people from abuse, but in so doing, we may stop people from being able to recognize such abuse when it actually happens (because they are so protected from it), and in turn be able to tell the difference between actual abuse and what is going on with this software project.
It's less that the people who are offended are being immature than that they are just reacting in the manner that modern society has programmed them to behave.
Agreed, but in practice there will always exist a confidence level somewhere below 100% where the confidence still outweighs any concerns they have about their security. Requiring me to have a backdoor in my computers or network for *ANYONE* that I do not personally administrate would put my confidence level somewhere in the vicinity of 0.
100% confidence in all circumstances is not required... and as you point out, it is actually useless. Anything that simply approaches 100% for all practical purposes is actually entirely sufficient.
Just because a person is not given the opportunity to learn something does not make them an idiot or particularly immature if they complain about something. it make them ignorant, but there is a pretty big difference
My point is that the kinds of rights that are given to employees in the workplace or to the general public on many popular social networks has probably created an expectation for many people that such rights actually extend to absolutely every avenue of society and practice. The fact that they may be wrong about this doesn't necessarily make them immature, except to the extent that laws that might protect people from abuse might also keep them from being able to learn how to recognize what such abuse actually is, and the difference between that and what is happening with this project.
I'll really start to worry if or when I am legally required to install a backdoor onto my network and computers in order to get any online connectivity at all.