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Article 3773 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: c89ponga@odalix.ida.liu.se (Pontus Gagge)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Look-up tables
Message-ID: <1992Feb15.200258.12407@ida.liu.se>
Date: 15 Feb 92 20:02:58 GMT
References: <299C3CC6.15601@orion.oac.uci.edu>
Sender: news@ida.liu.se
Organization: CIS Dept, Univ of Linkoping, Sweden
Lines: 32

schoi@teri.bio.uci.edu (Sam "Lord Byron" Choi) writes:

>I've been restraining myself for a couple months now from posting anything,
>hoping to catch up on the discussion before doing so, but I've found this
>an impossible task.

Hear, hear!

[Discussion leading up to the erroneous view that the table is infinite
 is rather brutally omitted]

>The main thesis is that although all the conversations in a lifetime are
>finite, the possible conversations are infinite since the question, before it
>is presented, is contingent.

Nope. We are restricting ourselves to a finite alphabet (the alphabet
that the Turing Test Terminal (TM) uses; the conversation as a whole
and therefore each entry is limited to maximally a century; therefore
each branch contains a finite number of alternatives, and as the depth
of the conversation tree is limited by the century limit, we get a huge,
gigantic, humongous table, but not an infinite one. Combinatorial
explosion does not an infinity make.

>Sam Choi
>schoi@charity.sas.upenn.edu
--
/-------------------------+-------- DISCLAIMER ---------\
| Pontus Gagge            | The views expressed herein  |
| University of Link|ping | are compromises between my  |
|                         | mental subpersonae, and may |
| c89ponga@und.ida.liu.se | be held by none of them.    |
\-------------------------+-----------------------------/


