My articles in this exchange have been singled out for deletion.
If the person deleting my articles has the guts to say why I'd like to hear it.
I've reposted my latest article. I will repost it every time it is deleted.
"Harry Erwin" <herwin at gmu.edu> wrote in message news:1eew5z2.15oy2at1guvygwN%herwin at gmu.edu...
> Kevin K. <KK at _._> wrote:
>> > Gary Forbis wrote:
> > >
> > > "Kevin K." <KK at _._> wrote in message news:3989AC71.7969B1CA at _._...> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Harry Erwin wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > You're missing my point. Symbols are signs. They belong to a countable
> > > > > set. Wind-tunnel models can vary continuously (or discontinuously). That
> > > > > matters--there are some applications (for example in hydraulic analysis)
> > > > > where symbolic modeling encounters an intractable problem, but analog
> > > > > modeling works fine.
> > > >
> > > > Intractability is a an issue relating to computational efficiency --
> > > > i.e. the time or space required to perform the calculation. It has no
> > > > bearing on Church's thesis. A Turing machine can be written to solve the
> > > > hydraulic problem to any desired degree of accuracy because the TM has
> > > > an infinite supply of time and space. It may take a while, but that's
> > > > okay, because Church's thesis concerns computability in principle, not
> > > > in practice.
> > >
> > > I hate "in principle" arguments applied to real objects.
> >
> > That's what this thread is about, in reverse. Mr. Erwin claimed that a
> > real object (the bat brain) had some bearing on a longstanding
> > mathematical principle (Church's thesis).
> >
> > BTW, do you hate it when "in principle" arguments like "the interior
> > angles of triangle total 180 degrees" are applied to real triangles? ;-)
I didn't know that was an "in principle" argument. Besides, while it applies
in Euclidian space it needn't apply everywhere.
> Well, I did spend a year learning to program a Turing machine when I was
> working on that PhD in algebraic topology. I'm probably one of the few
> people actually qualified to compare mathematical reasoning (what Turing
> was trying to reduce to syntax) to computational processes in wet
> networks.
Now, I'm going to be in real trouble.
Are there "computational processes in wet networks" or is it that the
processes in wet networks can be described computationally? Again,
does a rock perform computations by falling? What makes a process
a computational process?
