zlacker

> we are literally incapable of even constructing mathematical tools that will let us grab on to and manipulate such numbers

I think this is really the key to your point. Part of me wonders whether this should even make the example in the essay, BB(111), invalid. If there is no way in our universe to ever know exactly what BB(111) is, can it really be considered a well-defined number? That said, I'm no mathematician, so I'm probably off-base here.

My first though reading the challenge was a series of 7^7^7^7... since the 7s would nest together nicely (unlike 9s) :P

>>tempes+(OP)
It is well defined - it's "just" a matter of computation. There are a small number of possible 111-state turing machines - well, ok, there's actually a very large number, since it's one of those things that grows exponentially, but still, it's very much a finite number. For each of those possible turing machines, either it halts or it doesn't, something a programmer should be able to grind out; if it halts then it necessarily does so after some finite number of steps. So in principle we could compute all of those and then take the max of them. In practice it's a lot of steps - but we understand all the steps, so it would just be a matter of "cranking it out".

Conversely if you want to insist on a "constructible" number then you kind of have to insist on unary notation. Maybe a computer can give you a numerical value for "11^11^11^11", but can you really consider it well-defined if you can't put that many pebbles in a row? There are a few mathematicians who take this kind of view - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrafinitism - but it's very much an extreme position.

>>lmm+3c
I have some issue with how you're generating the BB numbers, though it's not necessarily mathematical. Fundamentally, "cranking it out" is exactly what you cannot do to generate the BBs: following any one specific set of instructions for generating the BBs is a futile exercise.

The problem arises when you say that "a programmer should be able to grind out" whether or not a TM halts or not, which you use to get around the fact that a TM cannot solve the halting problem. However, I'd question if this is a trivial exercise: while we certainly are capable of recognizing infinite loops in the code we write, I'm not certain that humans can identify arbitrary infinite loops. Obviously, whether or not we can isn't a trivially answerable question, as it comes down to whether or not our brain's neural networks can be modeled by a sufficiently large TM, and even if it cannot be modeled by a sufficiently large TM, what differences between our brains and a TM exist and why those would effectively allow us to solve the halting problem.

So I'd question whether finding the BBs is "'just' a matter of computation", because I'm not convinced that humans can solve the TM halting problem.

>>tcai+2d
Very good point. There's no reason to think we can solve the Halting Problem any more than a TM can, so the 'solved' BBs mentioned in the article are only solved in the sense that we puny humans had a look at all possible programs generated by BB(3) for example, focused on the ones that didn't appear to be halting, and decided by inspection that they wouldn't halt. That inspection process is not mathematically well-defined, so I'd argue that BB numbers should be inadmissible for the contest.

>>tcai+2d
I'd say that it is a trivially answerable question - "no, we cannot recognize arbitrary infinite loops" is the answer. It is easy to encode difficult-to-prove statements about number theory into loops. Consider a program that searched for a counterexample to the Collatz conjecture, or the Riemann Hypothesis.

>>tempes+(OP)
> If there is no way in our universe to ever know exactly what BB(111) is, can it really be considered a well-defined number?

There's a branch of Maths called constructivism which requires values/proofs/etc. to be "constructable" in principle. For example, the law of the excluded middle ('for all X, either X is true or (not X) is true') is not constructive, since it doesn't give us a value: we don't know whether we're dealing with X or (not X).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(mathematics)

Constructive mathematics turns out to be very closely related to computation, and is one reason why functional programming gets so much research attention.

Constructivists don't have a problem with infinite objects, like the set of all Natural numbers, if they can be represented in a finite way (eg. as a function). There's another branch of Mathematics knows as finitism, which regards infinities as not existing. What you're describing is ultrafinitism, which regards really big things as not existing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrafinitism

>>gd1+0h
The inspection can include proofs that the loopers loop, with the full mathematical power of the word "proof" behind it, so I'm willing to trust the known numbers. But the proofs can not be general (or at least not past a certain point which probably comes up pretty quickly), and will get ever more difficult to perform as we dig ever further down the sequence.

>>lmm+3c
BB(111) is not computable by "just computation". The issue is you have to prove that the programs that don't halt, don't halt. There is no general way to do this (Halting Problem). In fact once you get to a large enough n, BB(n) will be undecidable in whatever axioms you're using. We already have a simple proof of this by taking any known undecidable statement and turning it into a Turing machine halting problem.

>>tcai+2d
Thank you; this is a better explanation of what I was getting at in the GP comment. While it is theoretically possible that we could conclusively find BB(X) for any X, we don't know, nor can we prove, that we can (aside from the ones that have already been proven). Therefore I don't know that it makes sense to talk about it being a specific number, but rather the concept of a number (more like his "number of grains of sand in the Sahara" example, which he explicitly mentioned is not valid^.)

^Although his reasoning is that it is not valid because it is always changing, not specifically because it is unknown. Still, I assume that "Number of grains of sand in the Sahara at exactly midnight, Jan. 1 2050, on this atomic clock" would also be disallowed, even though it's possible we would somehow be able to know exactly what that number is in the future.