The Machine and the Limit

In-depth · Turing and Gödel

The Machine and the Limit

Turing, Gödel and the mathematical foundation of the incalculable remainder

"The computable functions are a countable island in an uncountable ocean."

The computable is an island - the incalculable is the ocean

From the book «Beyond Turing - The Incalculable Remainder»

Inside the article

The three knots

The halting problem

The boundary proved

Not «not yet found»: it cannot exist. Rice's theorem generalizes: every non-trivial property of programs is undecidable.

Gödel

Truth exceeds proof

Every consistent formal system contains truths it cannot prove: every system has an outside, and mathematics proved it by looking at itself.

The Turing test

A measure of performance, not existence

Language models pass the imitation game: they prove conversation is computable, not that someone has appeared behind the surface.

Antonio Fabbrizio
Contacts
Professor, engineer and researcher - eCampus University