Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 01-Nov-2024 08:22:02 JST screwlisp

   #lisp #bookstodon

   I forgot the author/title of that book where the author's idea is that there are many halting-problem-like unproveable features in computer programming. Do you know it? Lisp book lists?

   • Embed this notice
     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 01-Nov-2024 11:09:13 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     • DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄)

     @dougmerritt yeah, I think I butchered it, but I recall that it was a mathematical book by a common lisp programmer, and its blurb included something like what I said about the halting problem being a hint of something more general. (And I don't think it was by Hofstadter per the other toot). I remembered it as being in one of the book lists on cliki, but when I looked, I couldn't find it or a reference to anything that sounded like it.

   • Embed this notice
     DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄) (dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 01-Nov-2024 11:09:14 JST DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄)

     in reply to

     @screwtape
     Technically speaking, most possible programs *are* undecidable, as a matter of proven fact rather than as an author's opinion, and many programming books with an emphasis on computer science will say so or even spend chapters on the subject.

     In light of that, do you recall more things about the book, to help pin down that particular book?

   • Embed this notice
     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 01-Nov-2024 11:18:49 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     • DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄)

     @dougmerritt are any of the books by Chaitin anything like what I just said?

   • Embed this notice
     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 01-Nov-2024 13:41:52 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     • DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄)

     @dougmerritt okay, I read Chaitin's 36 page thing on the implications of a diophantine equation whose solutions depend on Chaitin's number,
     tl;dr
     the gist of which is that even in pure mathematics we're probably stuck going to empiricism, and that while mathematicians weren't obviously listening to him about it, with the advent of modern computing people were doing it anyway because it's something computers lend themselves to.

     ; he constructed lisps as practical support to his theorems