News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How has mathematics gotten so abstract? by zozbot234 on Tuesday September 30, 2025 @06:44PM (#45432157)
You can think that something doesn't exist in the general case, while still allowing that it might exist in unspecified narrow cases where additional constraints could apply. For example, there might be algorithms that can decide the halting problem for some non-Turing complete class of programs. Being able to talk in full generality about how such special cases might work is the whole point of non-constructive reasoning. It's "non-constructive" in that it states "I'm not going to construct this just yet".
Re:How has mathematics gotten so abstract? by btilly on Wednesday October 01, 2025 @01:34AM (#45434594)
Well yes. We can certainly make a function that acts something like that oracle in some special cases. But my point was to give an example of something that cannot be constructively created. The oracle that I described cannot exist within the universe of constructable things.