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Article 5479 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: smoliar@hilbert.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: penrose
Message-ID: <1992May8.115737.28474@nuscc.nus.sg>
Date: 8 May 92 11:57:37 GMT
References: <2524@ucl-cs.uucp> <1992May1.025230.8835@news.media.mit.edu> <1992May6.220605.26774@unixg.ubc.ca>
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Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
Lines: 24

In article <1992May6.220605.26774@unixg.ubc.ca> ramsay@unixg.ubc.ca (Keith
Ramsay) writes:
>In article <1992May1.025230.8835@news.media.mit.edu>
>minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
>> The math seems generally OK, but the stuff on universal Turing machines
>>seems
>>amateurish.  He either did not know, or neglected to point out that
>>there are known to be very small Universal Turing Machines (e.g, 4
>>symbols, 7 states).  
>
>Is there some special significance to this fact (so that one would
>make a special point of including it)?
>
One special point is that a Universal Turing Machine is not a very big "thing."
For example, it has fewer bits than the human genetic code.  I think it is very
important to realize that universal computation does not require some enormous
and elaborately convoluted structure.  It is simple enough that it could
probably arise by selection from a reasonably sized population of diverse
alternatives.
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg


