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From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Expert Systems, AI and Philosophy
Message-ID: <1995Dec9.024227.24575@media.mit.edu>
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Date: Sat, 9 Dec 1995 02:42:27 GMT
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In article <4aaohd$vv8@fox.iprolink.ch> David Meredith <meredith@iprolink.ch> writes:
>daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
>
>> Could you explain why you believe that a human can solve a noncomputable
>> problem? I believe that you are wrong about that.
>
>Roger Penrose claims to have *proved* that there are certain 
>mathematical problems that humans *have* solved that could not, even
>in principle, be solved algorithmically.

[...]

>He then goes on to demonstrate this.
>
>The case that he makes in this book is considerably stronger and
>more developed than in his "Emperor's New Mind".

Hoist by your (and his) own Petard.  In "Emperor" I could see no case
at all--only confusion about what "algorithm means" and how one could
be interpreted.

But here, first you (and he) speak about *proved* -- and then you
speak about a "stronger case*.  In "Emperor" I sawe nothing but
qasi-religious-oid cyberbabble.  If you can tell us a brief sketch of
(1) what is the unsolvable problem and (2) the main, clear steps of
the proofs, then I consider reading "Shadows".  

P.S. But not if (1) is "a person can prove Godel's theorem but no algorithm
can."  Let's not repeat the same old confusion.

And also, let's not confuse "solving a problem" with "guessing (a
possibly incorrect) solution".  It's too easy to make an algorithm that
