#computability

[m---a---x]

Inspired by all the newly created communities i have also created one about the topic closest to my heart: Foundational Mathematics

It is inteded for all types of posts about and from people of all kinds of backgrounds interested in the topic.

Please share with anyone you think might be interested. If you want to be added comment on this post, so I can add you.

[jadagul]

Since you're posting on the twin primes MTG combo: am I correct in thinking it was already possible to create a game state where the winner depended on whether the twin primes conjecture is true, due to the fact that you can establish a Turing machine in MTG? (Zimone, All Questioning just makes it simpler to do this, at the cost of making the relevance of the twin primes conjecture come in via game theory rather than just via resolving the rules.)

That does seem to be the case. Having now skimmed the paper, that's a much stronger result, because neither player ever has any choices to make. If you feed it a Turing machine that halts when it runs out of twin primes, which I think you can construct, then Alice wins if the Twin Prime conjecture is false and the game draws if the Twin Prime conjecture is true.

[hydraceous]

just learned that the set of computable reals is countable and I am filled with revulsion

[miscpav]

Steve Allen & Jayne Meadows, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Home Computers (Casablanca Records [!], 1983)

Grammy nominee (!!), Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording

Vinyl rip:

Video by Fran Blanche with the audio and showing the booklet included with the album:

More info: Discogs

Inspired the 1984 video Computability starring Allen and Meadows:

More info/links: waxy.org, IMDb, archive.org

[thedoubteriswise]

nothing funnier to me than when AI does math wrong. like I get why it happens, it's a language model that's treating the numbers you feed it as words rather than integers and then giving you an answer based on how those words typically appear in a block of text instead of actually performing a calculation. but the one thing computers are genuinely incredible at. you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did, look at it it's got hallucinations

[amantha-again]

Computer Science major here, it's not working because the computer doesn't respect you. download viruses on it to remind it who's boss.

follow for more tits

[madame-helen]

[foone]

officially-cool youtuber Tech Tangents was working on an old Tandy machine and discovered the most hilarious quit menu in all of software, buried in an obscure astrology program for DOS:

THE "MAYBE QUIT" OPTION!

For too long, computer programs have been asking if we're sure we want to quit, and only giving us a binary yes/no option. Finally we can leave whether we quit or not up to fate.

And yeah. When he tried it out, it failed to quit a few times and then quit. It seems it just flips a coin when you select it and either quits/does nothing based on it.

[4denthusiast]

The implication in the comment isn't correct. Consider the following game:

Player 1 picks a nondeterministic Turing machine

Player 2 picks an execution of that Turing machine

If it terminates with an empty tape, player 1 wins. If it terminates with a non-empty tape, player 2 wins. (If the Turing machine doesn't terminate, then neither does the game.)

This is obviously Turing complete, but there's also an obvious winning strategy of just picking a machine that immediately halts.

There's maybe a related but correct statement, but I'm not quite sure what it would be. I don't think it even implies that a brute-force algorithm to find a winning strategy wouldn't work, since the algorithm only needs to find a single winning solution, not all possible games, so it could just interleave the execution of possibly non-terminating states until one of them wins.

I guess this could fail if, as part of all winning strategies, the opponent of the ultimate winner is able to force the execution of an arbitrary Turing machine along the way, but in that case they could force the execution of a non-terminating TM, and thus avoid losing. (I'm assuming that if the game reaches a non-terminating state, that means neither player can win, so it counts as a draw. I don't know what the actual rule is.)

I guess it implies that checking whether there's a winning strategy from an arbitrary state is uncomputable at least.

Also, in a paper I found on the topic, they conjecture that it isn't even computable to determine what counts as a legal move (Conjecture 2), in which case you kind of can't even enter the game into an algorithm for finding a winning strategy in the first place.

I had assumed that the "running DOOM" thing would leave you tediously executing DOOM by hand, but the paper points out that you're allowed to use arbitrary shortcuts in MTG games, which implies that if you beat your opponent enough to be able to basically do what you like, choose to tediously set up a bootloader of some sort with your Magic cards, convince your opponent that the card-based computer you've set up is equivalent to a silicon computer you have handy, enter the DOOM code into it, then run that, it would count as a valid way game of Magic The Gathering. If you have your opponent playing DOOM though, they'd still have the right to slow it down to make it easier. To avoid the issue of relying on timing like DOOM, you could turn your Magic game into a non-real time game instead, like chess. Or recurse, and run Magic in Magic. (Technically an actual Turing machine, like the one they describe, accepts all its inputs at the start rather than as it runs, but I assume that's fixable.)

why is chess the Big Boy Smart Brain game?? there’s been no advances in strategy for 70 years. you can sit down and teach yourself the five winning moves in like a day. show me a computer that can flawlessly win any game of MTG and then ill be impressed.

[girltown420]

it is an honor 2 be in ur computer

[capesandshapes]

As a former librarian I'm actually required to remind you that many libraries that subscribe to Libby are opted into a program that lets you subscribe and access magazines for free with no wait

And that this is actually a really fun, low cost way to not only access news and larger cultural magazines, but also to get free patterns for many different crafts that you can screenshot if need be and that lower the financial barriers to entry for trying new things

From my experience working in both academic and public libraries, many libraries are use it or lose it funding-- I have to say this because a lot of patrons feel guilty for how much they use the library and how often they're using it funny enough, but the worst thing you can do for libraries is not try out new features and not use what's already given to you as much as possible.

The numbers that come as a result of your patronage are how most libraries justify their continued existence in times of financial hardship, which sucks but, go check out some magazines on Libby!

[prokopetz]

Wrong: Ada Lovelace invented computer science and immediately tried to use it to cheat at gambling because she was Lord Byron's daughter.

Right: Ada Lovelace invented computer science and immediately tried to use it to cheat at gambling because that was the closest you could get in 1850 to being a Super Mario 64 speedrunner.

[paintedcrows]

Whenever Bill sees KingOfNJ's fics through Stan's eyes he just thinks they have the same taste in fanfiction (disgusting. unthinkable) continued

[beausbugbiome]

Bugaboo Pocket released today on Steam! (Will be out on switch later 2025).

I’ve been excited about this game now for over a year! If you loved tamagatchi’s as a kid, you’ll love this game! You get to raise your very own digital pet insects, dress them up, and decorate their homes! 🐛