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From: Richard Damon <richard@damon-family.org>
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: Proof that DDD specifies non-halting behavior --- Mike is not
 paying attention
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2024 12:53:34 -0400
Organization: i2pn2 (i2pn.org)
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On 8/17/24 12:37 PM, olcott wrote:
> On 8/17/2024 11:33 AM, Richard Damon wrote:
>> On 8/17/24 12:27 PM, olcott wrote:
>>> On 8/17/2024 11:17 AM, Mike Terry wrote:
>>>> On 16/08/2024 22:03, Jeff Barnett wrote:
>>>>> On 8/16/2024 2:11 PM, Mike Terry wrote:
>>>>>> On 16/08/2024 07:57, Fred. Zwarts wrote:
>>>>>         <BIG SNIP>
>>>>>>> It is clear that olcott does not really read what I write. (Or is 
>>>>>>> very short of memory.)
>>>>>>> I never said such a thing.
>>>>>>> I repeatedly told that the simulating HHH aborted when the 
>>>>>>> simulated HHH had only one cycle to go. I never said that the 
>>>>>>> simulated HHH reached it abort and halted.
>>>>>>> In fact, I said that the fact that the simulation fails to reach 
>>>>>>> the abort and halt of the simulated HHH proves that the 
>>>>>>> simulation is incomplete and incorrect, because a complete 
>>>>>>> simulation (such as by HHH1) shows that the simulated HHH would 
>>>>>>> abort and halt.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It now becomes clear that you either never understood what I 
>>>>>>> said, or your memory is indeed very short.
>>>>>>> Give it some time to think about what I say, try to escape from 
>>>>>>> rebuttal mode, instead of ignoring it immediately.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That's all correct.  Going further I'll suggest that PO really 
>>>>>> doesn't "understand" /anything/ with an abstract / logical / 
>>>>>> mathematical content.  He can't understand definitions or their 
>>>>>> role in proofs, or the role of proofs in establishing knowledge. 
>>>>>> I'm not kidding or being rude or anything like that - it's simply 
>>>>>> the way his brain works.  *Of course* PO does not "really read 
>>>>>> what you write". Surely you must have at least suspected this for 
>>>>>> a long time?!  [I don't notice any problem with PO's memory.]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For PO it's all just "things he thinks are true", aka his 
>>>>>> intuitions. Those will not change as a result of any reasoning 
>>>>>> presented to him, because, literally, PO does not register any 
>>>>>> reasoning going on. It's impossible to fully imagine "what it's 
>>>>>> like to be PO", just like a seeing person can't /truly/ imagine 
>>>>>> how say a blind person or schizophrenic perceives the world - but 
>>>>>> as a starter, imagine you're hearing a foreign language and don't 
>>>>>> understand the words being used. OK, you recognise the odd word 
>>>>>> through repetition, and over time you've formed your own 
>>>>>> (incomplete and often incorrect) opinions of "what the words are 
>>>>>> to do with", but that's all.  You convince yourself you understand 
>>>>>> "what the words actually mean" but that's a delusion!  When people 
>>>>>> reply to what you say, you don't "understand" what they're really 
>>>>>> saying. ok, you recognise some of the keywords, and can tell from 
>>>>>> the tone of the reply whether they are agreeing or disagreeing 
>>>>>> with you, but that's about it!  You recognise some of the common 
>>>>>> objections people bring up, and over time you've developed stock 
>>>>>> phrases to repeat back to them, but there's no "logic" involved. 
>>>>>> You don't think all this is strange, because it's always been this 
>>>>>> way for you.  You don't even realise it's different for everybody 
>>>>>> else...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The analogy isn't perfect, because as a foreigner you would still 
>>>>>> be fully capable of reasoning, and you would realise that you 
>>>>>> don't understand key points and so on.  Instead of a lack of 
>>>>>> language understanding, the analogy should use a "lack of 
>>>>>> reasoning ability" theme or something equally fundamental, but 
>>>>>> that's not a common situation people can appreciate - practically 
>>>>>> /everybody/ in our lives that we interact with has an ability to 
>>>>>> reason correctly, understand definitions, understand what people 
>>>>>> are saying to them and what their beliefs are etc..  But PO is 
>>>>>> really not like all those normal people!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you expect to suddenly convince PO he is wrong, that won't 
>>>>>> happen. How to dispell a false intuition without using reasoning? 
>>>>>> If you expect to prove that PO is wrong, hey that's easy enough, 
>>>>>> but not really needed!  Nobody with any understanding of HP 
>>>>>> problem is taken in by PO's duffer speak.  Eventually most posters 
>>>>>> just get bored repeating the same explanations to him over and 
>>>>>> over, and umm stop doing it.  [It can take years to get tothat 
>>>>>> point...]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Perhaps a case could be made that continually demanding PO 
>>>>>> "proves" his claims is a form of "cruel and unusual punishment" as 
>>>>>> everybody here by now must appreciate that's far beyond his 
>>>>>> intellectual capabilities.  Or as a worst case, perhaps it might 
>>>>>> be compared with "taunting" a mentally handicapped (or at least 
>>>>>> mentally ill) person, which is obviously not nice at all.  But PO 
>>>>>> will not recognise that he is in that position, and the "taunters" 
>>>>>> only suspect, rather than truly believe, that this is in fact the 
>>>>>> scenario.  So no harm done perhaps.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think other posters here must wonder about this from time to 
>>>>>> time, but the thought makes them uncomfortable - if PO really / 
>>>>>> can't/ reason like normal people, then what would be the /point/ 
>>>>>> in constantly arguing [note: arguing, not debating/discussing] all 
>>>>>> this with him over and over and over?  This brings into question 
>>>>>> their own behaviour...  Easier perhaps to fall back on lazy 
>>>>>> thinking and just call him a liar, lazy, willfully ignorant and so 
>>>>>> on.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Perhaps the kindest approach would just be to let him get on with 
>>>>>> it? For PO, I feel he has abandoned his life plan of publishing 
>>>>>> his claims in a peer reviewed journal.  Instead I think he has 
>>>>>> settled for maintaining/reinforcing his delusions of geniushood 
>>>>>> for whatever time remains in his life.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I know some will not like this approach - PO is not a nice person; 
>>>>>> he is arrogant, self deluded, and insults posters to say nothing 
>>>>>> of those such as Turing/Godel/Tarski who have spent their lives 
>>>>>> thinking deeply about things and carefully developing their ideas. 
>>>>>> It may seem Wrong that PO could live his life casually insulting 
>>>>>> such people, and then die without getting any come-uppance; it's 
>>>>>> just ... not ... fair !!!  :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I understand that, but suggest that none of that really matters. 
>>>>>> People cannot change PO into something that he isn't.  When he 
>>>>>> dies, his mistakes will be quickly forgotten and the world will 
>>>>>> just carries on. No harm done...
>>>>> I agree with virtually every word you wrote above. However, I think 
>>>>> there is another ingredient mixed into PO that should not be 
>>>>> overlooked: he is extraordinarily lonesome. He is not a nice 
>>>>> person, as you have observed, and the way his mind works precludes 
>>>>> rational and/or friendly conversation. So he has no friends and he 
>>>>> both wants human contact (even electronically - how modern) and to 
>>>>> pay back those who shun him and treat him as the mental defective 
>>>>> that he probably is.
>>>>>
>>>>> So this is his social life; all of it. It is also the torture 
>>>>> chamber and in his mind he's the dungeon master. His method of 
>>>>> torturing all others is never providing positive feedback to those 
>>>>> who want to help improve him. Besides himself, most of the other 
>>>>> long term participants in these forums think of themselves as white 
>>>>> nights. And they are thwarted at every turn and that makes them try 
>>>>> harder so PO wins every encounter in the end.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, PO must have a pretty solitary life with little real social 
>>>> contact.
>>>>
>>>> You're right about the "white night" thing.  Initially it's 
>>>> reasonable that people encountering PO think they can help him 
>>>> simply by explaining his mistakes.  That was my first thought too.  
>>>> But over time most people come to realise their continued 
>>>> involvement wrt PO achieves nothing useful whatsoever.  That's not 
>>>> to say there are /no/ good reasons for continued involvement.  A 
>>>> case in point would be Richard, who has said he is of an age where 
>>>> he believes continually correcting PO's errors is a way of keeping 
>>>> his mind active, and I don't think he expects anything he is doing 
>>>> will "help" PO, or even help other readers.
>>>>
>>>> For some time at the beginning I continued because I was curious 
>>>> about the details of what PO had coded (his x86utm program), and I 
>>>> just enjoy mucking about with different code hence my curiosity. 
>>>> Also I have the white night syndrome I guess - but no illusions that 
>>>> I can help PO. Most of my early days on Usenet were spent on groups 
>>>> like alt.math.undergrad, where posters were typically students who 
>>>> were motivated to learn and so listened to what the regulars had to 
>>>> say. Compare that to sci.math which has almost no students, and 
>>>> instead has dozens of cranks whose aim is definitely /not/ to learn 
>>>> anything!
>>>>
>>>> If I post here these days it is generally for the possible benefit 
>>>> of others conversing with PO - e.g. perhaps it seems to me that 
>>>> weeks of time are being wasted /through some simple 
>>>> miscommunication/ with PO. I've been around longer than the current 
>>>> (relative) newcommers [not as long as you and Ben I think], so I 
>>>> have more context for what PO is trying to say, 
>>>
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