Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Mike Terry <news.dead.person.stones@darjeeling.plus.com>
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: What. A. Slog.
Date: Wed, 14 May 2025 18:50:44 +0100
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On 14/05/2025 08:11, vallor wrote:
> Spent a couple of hours reading back the last few days of posts.  Huboy,
> what a train wreck.  (But like a train wreck, it's hard to look
> away, which might explain how this has been going on for 20(?) years.)
> 
> I want to thank both Richard's, wij, dbush, Mike, Keith, Fred,
> Mikko, and anybody else I've forgotten for trying to explain to
> Mr. Olcott and Mr. Flibble how you all see their claims.  I wanted to
> point out three things:
> 
> a) Mr. Olcott claims his HHH simulator detects an non-terminating
> input and halts.  But others (I forget who) report that -- due
> to a bug -- D would actually terminate on its own.  His HHH
> simulator therefore gives the wrong answer.

Not really due to a bug.  D actually /does/ terminate on its own, and that's a consequence of PO's 
intended design.  (Yes, there are bugs, but D's coding is what PO intended.)

> 
> b) Mr. Olcott appears to agree with Turing at this point, but may
> be unwilling to abandon the work he's spent so much time on.
> 
> c) (I am not a doctor.)  After seeing Mr. Olcott's representations
> of Professor Sipser's words, as well as the way he edits his posts,
> as well as the way he ignores clear refutation, my personal,
> non-professional, opinion is that he's more deluded than
> outright dishonest.  Hopefully he can avoid the latter in the future.

I agree, although he is not completely beyond the odd lie from time to time.

[Like you, I'm not a doctor either.  My ideas below just seem logical to me...]

I have long put forward my theory that PO is "neurally divergent" or whatever the modern term should 
be:  his brain wiring renders him incapable of proper handling of abstract concepts, so naturally he 
cannot follow academic texts, understand their definitions or even their basic concepts, which are 
all "abstract".  Also the idea of "proof" or even "logical reasoning" is not something his brain 
registers - yes, he says he is presenting proofs and so on, but he doesn't really know what that 
would entail!  He's only saying it because he at least understands that that is what he must do in 
order to "win the argument".

I don't say any of this to insult PO.  It's the conclusion I reached when I looked at the nature of 
PO's mistakes that he makes over and over.  Obviously he doesn't "get" basic concepts like TM, 
Halting, function, number, truth, ...whatever, but the clue for me is in what he does instead.  He 
encounters the words, and in his head replaces them with non-abstract "concrete/mechanical" notions 
that do not properly reflect the meaning other people pick up.  So we have

-  TM --> C progam running on some physical/logical machine (like his x86utm execution environment)
-  function (mathematical) --> C function executing a sequence of steps
-  truth --> provable (proofs have a series of steps that can be mechanically verified)
-  halting --> some simulation by another piece of code reaching its end
-  pgm spec. --> description of the program steps a C function actually performs
....
and so on.  In each case, an abstract notion being blanked over, and in his head replaced with 
something more concrete ("procedural"), but missing the essence of the original concept.

And his "proofs" upon examination are seen to be not "logical reasoning" at all - he will make a 
series of claims that he thinks are true, but they do not actually follow from each other.  I don't 
doubt that PO /thinks/ that's what proofs are, because when he encounters others proving things he 
is literally blind to the "logical reasoning" aspect, and just sees somebody telling others what 
they believe is true.  I'm sure he thinks the reason that people accept (say) the HP is because some 
"expert" said it was the case, and the expert had been previously granted "reputation" which means 
he has to be taken seriously...  And also they use lots of strange symbols and notations, so that 
must be important too, if you want your proof to be accepted!

So given that he doesn't believe what he believes due to logical reasoning, what is left? 
Intuition.  All PO's "refutations" of famous proofs/results are just his first intuition when 
encountering a subject, just as children have first intuitions when they are introduced to new 
ideas.  But children grow, they develop and learn to study, reason logically, and can /learn/ that 
first intuitions are sometimes false.  PO simply has no basis on which he can move on from his first 
intuitions.

All the above is really just to say that trying to convince PO that he is wrong by using "logical 
reasoning" is a complete waste of time.  My thought was that what he needed was /concrete 
demonstrations/ to convince him, like um, like an actual trace of his D running and returning!  But 
PO has that and he just doubles down with more and more contorted explanations for why his first 
intuition was right all along!


Mike.