let's write a function to see if any other function will halt/crash. how hard could this be. has anyone worked on this problem
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Christine Lemmer-Webber (cwebber@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 02:56:02 JST Christine Lemmer-Webber
- GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 02:57:48 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
@cwebber C programmers can, it's just UB when it's not trivial :D -
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Christine Lemmer-Webber (cwebber@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 02:58:03 JST Christine Lemmer-Webber
@Tina it would be pretty funny to try to get it to autocomplete some programs like that
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Tina (tina@mastodon.ie)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 02:58:09 JST Tina
@cwebber sure ChatGPT can cook something for you 😂
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Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 03:02:00 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
@cwebber That said it could also just be:
bool will_crash(void *func) { return true; /* covers 80% of cases */ } -
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Respectable Normie, Esq. (taq@thicc.horse)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 03:03:17 JST Respectable Normie, Esq.
@cwebber ⚓ I've been working at this for a while! so far I've got
willItHalt(funcName):
while(True):
pass
return True -
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Christine Lemmer-Webber (cwebber@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 03:06:43 JST Christine Lemmer-Webber
@owen I'm pretty sure a just god would have to warn me that my program is going to crash not let me figure it out
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Owen (owen@mastodon.transneptune.net)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 03:06:44 JST Owen
@cwebber you could probably make a religion out of this
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Christine Lemmer-Webber (cwebber@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 03:22:15 JST Christine Lemmer-Webber
Thinking about the time that @aeva said something like:
"Solved the halting problem: every program will halt (heat death of the universe)"
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Ben Zanin (gnomon@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 04:12:36 JST Ben Zanin
@cwebber oh I could do that in a weekend! It would be easy for me. Perhaps even easier for me than for Hephaestus
(edit: I maxed out there at only three memes, I'm sure someone can do better)
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Random Geek (randomgeek@masto.hackers.town)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 04:16:55 JST Random Geek
@cwebber can we solve it in Logo? No reason. I just thought it would be cool if the solution involved turtles.
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this. -
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Christine Lemmer-Webber (cwebber@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 04:17:39 JST Christine Lemmer-Webber
@randomgeek oh yeah, turtles all the way down
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Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 04:18:43 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
@randomgeek @cwebber So *not* turtles all the way down when recursion is solved? ^^ -
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Andrew (cinebox@masto.hackers.town)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 04:38:31 JST Andrew
@cwebber [turns off the computer]
yes -
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Mx. Eddie R (silvermoon82@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 05:02:17 JST Mx. Eddie R
@DopeGhoti @cwebber
I had a boss totally seriously suggest we would just need to write a function to determine if an arbitrary js function would return.Christine Lemmer-Webber repeated this. -
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DopeGhoti (dopeghoti@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 05:02:18 JST DopeGhoti
@cwebber
there's only two possibilities; it has to be simpler than the three-body problem, right?Christine Lemmer-Webber repeated this. -
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Steven Sandoval (baltakatei@twit.social)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 05:49:23 JST Steven Sandoval
@silvermoon82 @DopeGhoti @cwebber To spell it out for people not in the know, this is about the Halting Problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
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Random Geek (randomgeek@masto.hackers.town)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 07:03:52 JST Random Geek
@lanodan @cwebber just imagined a turtle drawing a program interpreted by a turtle running on a VM drawn by a turtle rendering on a virtual display drawn by OW MY BRAIN
LOGO or zoological. Either way.
In conversation permalink Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this. -
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Indieterminacy (indieterminacy@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 09:16:16 JST Indieterminacy
@cwebber This video from Markus Triska covers meta predicates and decidability.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=m3cbgebcKngIt left me with a kind of dread hearing such CS positions, though I guess there was enough insights and knowhow to get over it.
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Indieterminacy (indieterminacy@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 09:23:44 JST Indieterminacy
@cwebber That Racket packaging bug was god talking to you:
https://social.coop/@cwebber/114722839491269899In conversation permalink Attachments