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From: Richard Damon <richard@damon-family.org>
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: Why Peter Olcott is both right and wrong
Date: Fri, 16 May 2025 20:25:58 -0400
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On 5/16/25 5:44 PM, olcott wrote:
> On 5/16/2025 4:33 PM, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>> Mr Flibble <flibble@red-dwarf.jmc.corp> writes:
>>
>>> On Fri, 16 May 2025 00:59:02 +0100, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>>>
>>>> Mr Flibble <flibble@red-dwarf.jmc.corp> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, 15 May 2025 13:23:43 +0100, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Mr Flibble <flibble@red-dwarf.jmc.corp> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> the truth is pathlogical input is undecidable:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> No input[1] is undecidable.
>>>>>
>>>>> Eh?  Partial deciders are a thing.
>>>>
>>>> Yes.  That does not alter the fact that no input is undecidable.
>>>
>>> Pathological input is undecidable as pathological input is an 
>>> "impossible
>>> program" [Strachey 1965].
>>
>> The most likely explanation is that you don't know what decidable means.
>> Either that or you just like posting remarks for the sake of it.
>>
> 
> Sure and these two PhD computer science professors
> would also have no idea what the terms of their are mean:
> 
> Problems with the Halting Problem
> Eric C.R. Hehner
> https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/PHP.pdf
> 
> Halting misconceived?
> Bill Stoddart
> August 25, 2017
> https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/euroforth/ef17/papers/stoddart.pdf
> 

Yes, they show that they have no idea about computation theory, as they 
make rookie mistakes, like not understand that programs will do what 
they do. (They may be good in other parts of Computer Science, just  not 
Computation Theory)

That just shows the problem with trying to base an argument on 
"authority". It may work in general Philosophy, but not in a formal 
system like Computation Theory.