this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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It has nothing to do with whether humans are Turing complete or not. No Turing machine is capable of solving an undecidable. But humans can solve undecidables. Machines cannot solve the problem the way a human would. So, no, humans are not machines.
This by definition limits the autonomy a machine can achieve. A human can predict when a task will cause a logic halt and prepare or adapt accordingly, a machine can't. Unless intentionally limited by a programmer to stop being Turing complete and account for the undecidables before hand (thus with the help of the human). This is why machines suck at unpredictable or ambiguous task that humans fulfill effortlessly on the daily.
This is why a machine that adapts to the real world is so hard to make. This is why autonomous cars can only drive in pristine weather, on detailed premapped roads with really high maintenance, with a vast array of sensors. This is why robot factories are extremely controlled and regulated environments. This is why you have to rescue your roomba regularly. Operating on the biggest undecidable there is (e.g. future parameters of operations) is the biggest yet unsolved technological problem (next to sensor integration on world parametrization and modeling). Machine learning is a step towards it, in a several thousand miles long road yet to be traversed.
No, we can't. Or, more precisely said: There is no version of your assertion which would be compatible with cause and effect, would be compatible with physics as we understand it.
Don't blame me I didn't do it. The universe just is that way.
Yet we live in a world where millions of humans assert their will over undecidables every day. Because we can make irrational decisions, logic be damned. Explain that one.
That's not deciding anything in the information-theoretical sense. We rely a lot on approximations and heuristics when it comes to day to day functioning.
You can't decide the halting problem by saying "I'll have a glance at it and go with whatever I think after thinking about it for half a second". That's not deciding the problem that's giving up on it and computers are perfectly capable of doing that.