[FOM] Re: Crystal Ball Theory

[Harvey Friedman]

On 2/25/04 12:18 PM, "Timothy Y. Chow" <tchow at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> Harvey Friedman wrote:
>> 2. What kinds of exciting/important questions can be appropriately packed
>> into at most 100 Turing machine quadruples? What techniques can be used
>> to reduce the number of quadruples needed?
> 
> Do you have a partial answer to this question already?  When you mentioned
> sporadic simple groups and so on, did you mean that you have worked out
> the details and found that 100 quadruples suffice for these particular
> problems?
> 

No. If I wasn't so booked up with other commitments, I would try to see how
few quadruples I can get away with for a number of statements. I am claiming
absolutely nothing at this point.

The number 100 was chosen as my best GUESS as to what can probably be done
with a major effort.

In any interesting context in which you can do 100, I will then ask you
about 90.

Harvey Friedman