Questions tagged [computation]
Computational theory is the study of calculations. Important questions are: what can be computed? How quickly can it be computed? What requirements or abilities must a computer have?
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What are your thoughts on P=NP [closed]
While it is possible that P does or does not equal NP, I would love to hear the philosopher's ideas on the matter. This is a mathematics question in which we are asked if certain problems can be ...
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What makes a system of syntax capable of being computable?
It will be easier if I present the motivation in order to express the question better.
Creating shorthand symbols for long sentences/propositions/assertions is ubiquitous. Many authors do it ...
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Does or could ChatGPT understand text? [closed]
The following argument concludes that the common understanding of ChatGPT (trained on text, receives online users' text questions, etc.) is not supported by the science. What criticisms are there of ...
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Why is the lack of sound proof theory fatal for Second-Order Logic but the practical lack of sound proof theory for FOL benign?
Received orthodoxy says, among the community of logicians, that first-order logic (with predicates, connectives, and variables) is good because it has a sound proof theory and second-order logic (with ...
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Can Consciousness be Computationally Reconstructed from a Painting?
Suppose that Pablo Picasso was undergoing an arbitrary conscious experience while putting the finishing touches on Guernica. Would it be possible to reverse-engineer that conscious experience ...
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Turing Machines that interact with physics [closed]
Fix a Turing-complete programming language P and character set. For sufficiently large 'n', an 'n' character program in P cannot decide the halting behavior of all programs with fewer than 2n ...
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Why is a non-computable function a coherent idea?
In English, the word "function" means "doing". Asking "what's its function?" is logically equivalent to asking "what does it do?". So a non-computable function ...
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How Can Computation Cause Consciousness?
The question of how consciousness arises and what, if any, effect it has on our behaviour is clearly both fascinating intellectually and of great practical and ethical significance. One very common ...
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Are evolution and reinforcement learning related?
Are evolution and reinforcement learning related?
Evolution and reinforcement learning are related in that they both involve a process of learning and adaptation over time.
Evolution is a biological ...
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Could a quantum computer simulate any system based on different types of logic?
Quantum computing is based on quantum mechanics (obviously) which has different logical rules than classical/Boolean logic.
However, does this mean that a quantum computer could simulate or process ...
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In line with Roger's Penrose argumentation, why is human mind not computable, when large language models are?
Roger Penrose famously from Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, that human mind is not computable, because mathematical intuition is not computable (a mathematician can prove more than any formal system, ...
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Does a rock falling down a hill perform computation?
Imagine a rock in the shape of a chessboard with pieces in a certain configuration.
Throw the rock down a particular hill. The hill is shaped in such a way that, given the correct throw, the ...
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Church-Turing Thesis and the human brain
A question on my homework: Imagine that scientists discover that the behavior of the brain can be completely described by some mathematical function. Given the Church–Turing Thesis, would this ...
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The Relationship between the Church–Turing Thesis and Physical Computation
Consider the following thesis (aka Church-Turing (CT) Thesis): Every function that can be calculated by an effective method is Turing-computable.
Suppose there is a physical process that allows for ...
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Halting Problem Oracle
Halting problem is unsolvable. There is no method to solve it, so no human can solve it.
So why is any theory utilising an oracle (which can solve halting problem) not simply nonsense?
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