[FOM] Re: On physical Church-Turing Thesis
Eric Baum
ebaum at fastmail.fm
Sun Feb 15 14:11:46 EST 2004
Warren D. Smith wrote two relevant papers. In the first,
if I recall correctly, he showed that for n bodies interacting
under Newtonian gravity, he could construct an orbit that
was not simulable by a Turing machine, although if he added
in some relativistic effects, the Church-Turing thesis held
again.
In the second, he showed the Church-Turing thesis is true in
nonrelativistic quantum mechanics with sufficiently nice potentials.
Church's thesis meets the n-body problem:
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/77650.html
Church's thesis meets quantum mechanics:
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/smith99churchs.html
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The model is motivated by and consistent with extensive
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As part of this pedagogy, Chapter 2 reviews Turing's case
that a Turing machine can simulate the brain.
For more information see:
http://www.whatisthought.com
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