XPost: comp.theory, sci.math, comp.ai.philosophy   
   From: tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk   
      
   On 13/01/2026 14:34, olcott wrote:   
   > On 1/13/2026 8:23 AM, Tristan Wibberley wrote:   
   >> On 13/01/2026 09:11, Mikko wrote:   
   >>> An oracle machine may be   
   >>> able to determine the haltinf of all Turing machines but not of all   
   >>> oracle machines with the same oracle (or oracles) so it is not   
   >>> universal.   
   >>   
   >> What's the formal definition of "an oracle machine" ?   
   >>   
   >> I would have thought an oracle always halts because it's an oracle it   
   >> answers every question that has an answer with either "HasAnswer answer"   
   >> or "HasNoAnswer".   
   >>   
   >   
   > It seems outside of computer science and into fantasy.   
   > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_machine   
   >   
      
   Perhaps a halting oracle is real computer science, if it's own actions   
   are nondeterministic (ie, use bits of entropy from the environment via   
   /dev/random to guide its search through confluent paths) then it could   
   always find whether a deterministic program halts because no   
   deterministic program has the oracle as a subprogram.   
      
   Then we have a new but different problem of making sure no two oracles   
   receive the same sequence of entropy bits so an oracle can report on a   
   program that contains it.   
      
   --   
   Tristan Wibberley   
      
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