Dude, if you going to clutter my screen like that, couldn't you at least have done it with the digits of pi or e or the Feigenbaum number or something like that?
Sheesh.
While you're at it, why don't you force the screen width out at the same time? If you're gonna annoy us, why not go all the way?
Not quite. The Halting Problem is impossible for a computer to solve. In other words, it's impossible to automate the process of checking for infinite loops.
Programmers don't have that limitation (as least most of them don't). Since we are able to recognize and predict certain kinds of outcomes that computers can't, we are often able to be sure if the result of a program is correct, even if we can't write a program that can be sure.
IANAL, but I think the line may be whether another party's code or design concept has been violated. It's usually easy to prove whether code has been stolen, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office allows for protection of "design patents".
Anyone remember a number of years ago (about 1992-3) when Stac Electronics sued M$ for stealing their Stacker code (Stacker was a drive compression TSR for MS-DOS that M$ repackaged as Drivespace)?
Stac proved that their code was stolen, and was awarded something like $10M. M$ countersued, basically admitting that they stole the code, but said Stac shouldn't have been reverse engineering their code. M$ won that countersuit and got something like $100M, plus they could keep packaging Drivespace with MS-DOS.
It's like if I break into your house and steal your TV. You come home, notice your TV is gone, take the law into your own hands, break into my house and take my TV back. I have to admit, I stole your TV, but, hey, you shouldn't have broken into my house. Not only do I get you thrown in jail, but I get to keep your TV...
Penrose is full of it. That's because he claims that a human brain isn't in the same class as a silicon brain. That's his ego talking; *it* might be non-deterministic, but that's not a bad thing.
You're not the first I've heard say that, but I've never heard him talk himself up. Others, including Stephen Hawking, Edward Witten, Daniel Dennett, etc. seem to think he's pretty freaking smart.
Individual *circuits* show non-deterministic behavior at a low level. It would be *easy* to create a machine that simply acted unpredictably. That wouldn't make it intelligent, though, any more than a person after too many hits of acid is...
A well designed digital circuit doesn't though. Unpredictability doesn't equal intelligence. Penrose only suggests that intelligence requires non-deterministic systems.
At the quantum level, it's quite possible that *everything* employs multiple universes to get from point A to point B; or simply jumps there, or slips slightly forward or back in time, affecting the surrounding quanta slightly, or...
True, but some outcomes result in more "possible point B's" than others. Deterministic systems only have one point B.
Anyhow, read "Godel, Escher, Bach" instead of "The Emporer's New Mind". Or read them both, and decide who addresses the issues, and who is defending the human race with his huge ego...
I've read both, and I don't think their views are mutually exclusive. Hofstadter points to the idea that systems can have multiple levels with different kinds of behavior (ant v. anthill). I don't think Penrose has a problem with that. He just says that digital computers can't jump out of themselves.
Christ, I can't stand Penrose. He's the modern version of Kant. I think they were both knighted, and popular in their time, *and* both were huge assholes with huge egos.
Whether Penrose is an asshole or not isn't the point. One can be an asshole and still be correct.
Roger Penrose, a mathematics professor at Oxford, makes a compelling argument that no digital computer will ever be able to do abstract reasoning and be intelligent in the way that most define the word "intelligent."
He attacks this issue differently from Turing (there's an old saying that most people can't pass the Turing test anyway) and takes an approach similar to Kurt Gödel's work in incompleteness of formal systems, which showed that any system you can come up with will always have propositions that cannot be proved or disproved in that system.
He argues that certain things that humans do all the time, like comprehending paradoxes, self-reference, abstract assocation, world modeling, etc. cannot be done by any deterministic system (including digital computers), in a finite amount of time.
He also has a controversial theory that brains use quantum mechanical effects to employ "multiple universes" to get from point A to point B. His argument is way out there, but it's pretty airtight.
The Sir Roger Penrose Society discusses this a lot and has lots of links to other similar discussions.
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Dude, if you going to clutter my screen like that, couldn't you at least have done it with the digits of pi or e or the Feigenbaum number or something like that?
Sheesh.
While you're at it, why don't you force the screen width out at the same time? If you're gonna annoy us, why not go all the way?
Kids these days... No creativity...
Not quite. The Halting Problem is impossible for a computer to solve. In other words, it's impossible to automate the process of checking for infinite loops.
Programmers don't have that limitation (as least most of them don't). Since we are able to recognize and predict certain kinds of outcomes that computers can't, we are often able to be sure if the result of a program is correct, even if we can't write a program that can be sure.
Good question...
IANAL, but I think the line may be whether another party's code or design concept has been violated. It's usually easy to prove whether code has been stolen, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office allows for protection of "design patents".
Anyone remember a number of years ago (about 1992-3) when Stac Electronics sued M$ for stealing their Stacker code (Stacker was a drive compression TSR for MS-DOS that M$ repackaged as Drivespace)?
Stac proved that their code was stolen, and was awarded something like $10M. M$ countersued, basically admitting that they stole the code, but said Stac shouldn't have been reverse engineering their code. M$ won that countersuit and got something like $100M, plus they could keep packaging Drivespace with MS-DOS.
It's like if I break into your house and steal your TV. You come home, notice your TV is gone, take the law into your own hands, break into my house and take my TV back. I have to admit, I stole your TV, but, hey, you shouldn't have broken into my house. Not only do I get you thrown in jail, but I get to keep your TV...
Penrose is full of it. That's because he claims that a human brain isn't in the same class as a silicon brain. That's his ego talking; *it* might be non-deterministic, but that's not a bad thing.
You're not the first I've heard say that, but I've never heard him talk himself up. Others, including Stephen Hawking, Edward Witten, Daniel Dennett, etc. seem to think he's pretty freaking smart.
Individual *circuits* show non-deterministic behavior at a low level. It would be *easy* to create a machine that simply acted unpredictably. That wouldn't make it intelligent, though, any more than a person after too many hits of acid is...
A well designed digital circuit doesn't though. Unpredictability doesn't equal intelligence. Penrose only suggests that intelligence requires non-deterministic systems.
At the quantum level, it's quite possible that *everything* employs multiple universes to get from point A to point B; or simply jumps there, or slips slightly forward or back in time, affecting the surrounding quanta slightly, or...
True, but some outcomes result in more "possible point B's" than others. Deterministic systems only have one point B.
Anyhow, read "Godel, Escher, Bach" instead of "The Emporer's New Mind". Or read them both, and decide who addresses the issues, and who is defending the human race with his huge ego...
I've read both, and I don't think their views are mutually exclusive. Hofstadter points to the idea that systems can have multiple levels with different kinds of behavior (ant v. anthill). I don't think Penrose has a problem with that. He just says that digital computers can't jump out of themselves.
Christ, I can't stand Penrose. He's the modern version of Kant. I think they were both knighted, and popular in their time, *and* both were huge assholes with huge egos.
Whether Penrose is an asshole or not isn't the point. One can be an asshole and still be correct.
Roger Penrose, a mathematics professor at Oxford, makes a compelling argument that no digital computer will ever be able to do abstract reasoning and be intelligent in the way that most define the word "intelligent."
He attacks this issue differently from Turing (there's an old saying that most people can't pass the Turing test anyway) and takes an approach similar to Kurt Gödel's work in incompleteness of formal systems, which showed that any system you can come up with will always have propositions that cannot be proved or disproved in that system.
He argues that certain things that humans do all the time, like comprehending paradoxes, self-reference, abstract assocation, world modeling, etc. cannot be done by any deterministic system (including digital computers), in a finite amount of time.
He also has a controversial theory that brains use quantum mechanical effects to employ "multiple universes" to get from point A to point B. His argument is way out there, but it's pretty airtight.
The Sir Roger Penrose Society discusses this a lot and has lots of links to other similar discussions.