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A comment on Ask HN: Why do many CS graduates lack foundational knowledge?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Why do many CS graduates lack foundational knowle... by thrown123098 on Monday March 20, 2023 @06:44PM (#35239906)
It is left as an exercise to the reader to find a natural number which isn't arbitrarily large but calculable.
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Re:Ask HN: Why do many CS graduates lack foundational knowle... by rrobukef on Tuesday March 21, 2023 @03:08AM (#35243289)
The tape size needed for a Turing machine is incalculable. Here's a reference to a proof: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2725.

The machine with 7918-states, Z, stops (well, Z cannot be proven to run infinitly long) iff. ZFC is consistent. For this it needs a finite amount of space but we cannot calculate how much. If we could calculate an upper bound we've proven ZFC is consistent.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do many CS graduates lack foundational knowle... by thrown123098 on Tuesday March 21, 2023 @08:23AM (#35245217)
Yes which is why the size if strictly finite but arbitrarily large.
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