On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 03:21:12PM +0000, Click Nilson wrote:
> > . All you need is
> > a infinite set of infinitely patient musicians.
>
> Current practical computational systems are finite. Perhaps you mean a finite but possibly large set of sufficiently patient musicians, where human bounds on activity without food, sleep, etc will be an interesting chief obstacle.
Well for any given problem the set needed is finite. However, for
every problem you can come up with I can name one that would be more
complicated and need more musicians.
To be Turning *complete* you then need a infinitely large set.
It follows that your computer is not actually a "universal Turing
machine" and merely would be if it had a infinite amount of memory.
Consider for example the number X. X would be n+1 where n equals 2
raised to the power of the number of the most elementary particles in
the universe. Computationally it is possible to calculate this, in
practice I don't think you could. Being "Turing complete" is a
entirely theoretical concept.
I would not lose any sleep over this; a symphonic orchestra should be
enough computational power for anyone ;-)
Kas.
Received on Sun Jan 13 2013 - 15:55:08 GMT