[FOM] QUESTION ABOUT COMPUTERS

[Eray Ozkural]

On 10/8/06, laureano luna <laureanoluna at yahoo.es> wrote:
> I'm no expert, but it seems to me that to avoid
> circularity the fact has to be that a part of a
> program changes another part of that program. So, a
> question: won't there always be an unchanged core in
> the programming of every possible computer?

Greetings Laureano,

Indeed there will be a causal connection, but in practice
there is nothing that prevents a program from completely
overwriting existing code, since it can change every
memory location. A simple example of this is the
Operating System loader. We can "bootstrap" by
first loading a small program which then loads the real
OS and overwrites itself.

Logically, of course, this is equivalent to executing
a LISP program which consists of a single EVAL
function.

Best Regards,

-- 
Eray Ozkural, PhD candidate.  Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunct: http://myspace.com/malfunct
ai-philosophy: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ai-philosophy