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From: =?UTF-8?B?QW5kcsOpIEcuIElzYWFr?= <agisaak@gm.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: How to write a self-referencial TM?
Date: Sun, 18 May 2025 21:21:36 -0600
Organization: Christians and Atheists United Against Creeping Agnosticism
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In-Reply-To: <100dloh$16vdn$2@dont-email.me>

On 2025-05-18 16:08, olcott wrote:
> On 5/18/2025 4:58 PM, André G. Isaak wrote:

>> In English, both 'description' and 'specification' can refer to 
>> something which is either complete or only partial.
>>
> 
> Description typically means partial and
> specification typically means complete.
> 

I don't think you'll find that most people will agree with this. That 
might be your usage.

The problem is that 'specification' has already been used in much of 
this discussion to mean something else. A TM's specification outlines 
what it is that that TM is supposed to do without going into the details 
of how it actually does it.

For example, the specification of a Parity Decider would be a TM takes a 
representation of a natural number as its initial tape content and 
accepts it only if it is even.

The description of that machine, on the other hand, would describe what 
the alphabet of this machine is, what it's state transitions are, etc. 
i.e. it would give all the information necessary to actually construct 
the machine.

André

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