[FOM] Counterfactuals in relative computability theory

Matthias Jenny mjenny at mit.edu
Fri Sep 2 11:19:25 EDT 2016


On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 7:15 PM Timothy Y. Chow <tchow at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> I'm not convinced it's accurate either, but I certainly don't think
> there's a consensus on this point.  In particular, I'm surprised to see
> that you think that textbook discussions don't point to sociological
> facts, since in my experience, they almost always mention that
> sociological fact that there was rapid acceptance of the Church-Turing
> thesis after three different definitions were shown to coincide (indeed,
> you mentioned this sociological fact yourself).
>

You're right, they do mention this sociological fact. But I guess the way
I've always understood it is as evidence that Turing machines are a correct
model of computation, not as evidence that people will continue to accept
Turing machines in the future.
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