Re:Hilbert's 24th problem
by JadeNB on Tuesday August 19, 2014 @08:15AM
(#8196905)
I don't know—there's a big gap between asking "how do you measure this philosophical-sounding quantity?" and actually coming up with a concrete means of doing so. I could ask here "how do you define consciousness for machines?", but (even if I were the first to do so) it wouldn't be fair to say that I'd anticipated Sharmach's landmark 2098 paper solving the problem.
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I think Kolmogorov complexity is spot on comparison, considering programs as proofs, theorems as types in the Curry–Howard isomorphism.
That might not have been parent's point. I see it more as "this is such a natural thing to want" that mathematicians had been thinking about it, even before we could come up with a coherent definition for the concept.
In some ways, this is a good example to avoid making the "fallacy fallacy" - just because someone's argument/reasoning is wrong or incoherent, it doesn't mean the point itself is wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy
The solution of other similar things like the halting problem, is also a testament to the power of mathematics and formal language, and gives us some hope that this problem (and similar things like consciousness) will be solved in the future.
Re:Hilbert's 24th problem
by tom_scrace on Tuesday August 19, 2014 @09:27AM
(#8197119)
Sharmach! Pah! Everybody knows that it was Wang-Kleetch who solved the problem in 2094. The charlatan Sharmach merely read the pre-publication draft and claimed the work as his own.
It is hard to believe that this nonsense is still being promoted all this time later.