It is rare that I don't understand a nerd joke but I am completely lost
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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Yes I know about the halting problem, I got extra credit in school for writing a paper with a detailed analysis of a busy beaver machine which at the time ran longer than any in the published literature. I just can't understand the joke... are there people on the second track? Won't the train stop wherever the person is, since the person is defined to be left at the place the trolley will stop? Won't the person die of old age? Why does the diagram show them only 50 meters away, where they're definitely going to die one second from now?
HELP I AM CONFUSED I AM TAKING IT TOO SERIOUSLY
Yep, my brain also jammed trying to understand what is meant here. Even though I got a degree in theoretical CS...
My thought is the left track should start the Turing machine, which is more of an infinite sum joke than the halting problem necessarily? Or the halting problem bit is a sort of tangential pun. The right should just be an infinite track with a person at the end.
Edit: I suppose the infinite sum/halting problem are better described as two sides of the same coin than tangential.
Yes I stumbled on the secondary thought process of how many people I'm trying, or not trying to run over....which isn't clear.
We would need to define an oracle that would put the person at that spot though. Right?
Yeah, you're not alone
Desperately tried to make sense of it...
Has anyone considered just flipping the switch between the front and rear trolley wheels derailing the fucker?
Damn beat me to it
The Luddites would like a word.
Damn you!
That’s what I came here to say.
I guess the only thing worst than be tied down to a track while a trolley passes over you is being tied down there forever while you suffer for malnurishment and dehydration.
why would I pull the lever in that case?
also 1/2^(-n) is just 2^n^
the only downside of not pulling the lever is that the machine, if it ever finishes, may take significantly longer to do so
or am I missing something?
otherwise very cool crossover of halting problem and trolley problem, good stuff
Was the lever track supposed to be a supertask? Cuz 1/(2^-n ) is just 2^n , so each instruction takes exponentially longer to execute, so unless the complex turning machine halts in like a single instruction, lever guy is gonna die 100%
But non-lever guy has the potential to either die after a very decent while, or never at all, and lever guy is safe too if i don't pull the lever