Hal Finney wrote: > > That would be true IF you include descriptions that are infinitely long. > Then the set of all descriptions would be of cardinality c. If your > definition of a description implies that each one must be finite, then the > set of all of them would have cardinality aleph-zero. > > What Russell wrote was that the set of all descriptions could be computed > in c time on an ordinary Universal Turing Machine. My question is, does > it make sense to speak of a machine computing for c steps; it seems like > asking for the "c"th integer.
The descriptions in the Schmidhuber ensemble are infinite in length. At this stage, I see no problem in talking about machines computing c steps, but obviously others (such as Schmidguber) I know would disagree. Its like asking for the "c"th real number, rather than the "c"th integer, if you like. I'm not sure what the connection is with this non-standard model of computation and others such as Malament-Hogarth machines (sp?) Cheers ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 (") Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------