• skisnow@lemmy.ca
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    22 hours ago

    Mathematically you might be able to prove I don’t always (and I’m not convinced of that even; I don’t think there is an inherent contradiction like the one used for the proof of Halting), but the bar for acceptable false positives is sufficiently low and the scenario is such an edge case of an edge case of an edge case, that anyone trying to use the whole principle to argue anything about real-world applications is grasping at straws.

    • floopus@lemmy.ml
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      19 hours ago

      I suggest you re-read through the proof of the halting problem, and consider precisely what it’s saying. It really has been mathematically proven.

      But fair enough, the program made in the halting problem you probably wouldn’t ever encounter. But the consequence is, if you were trying to write an algorithm that solves the halting problem, you would have to sacrifice some level of correctness - and technically any algorithm you write would fail or loop forever on an infinite number of programs, surely one of them would be useful. Consider the Collatz conjecture. I severely doubt anyone would be able to “decide” the collatz conjecture program halting without it being a very specific proof of it (with maybe some generalisations).