hrishimittal comments on The First Koan: Drinking the Hot Iron Ball - Less Wrong
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Annoyance, can you please tell this koan without using the words 'Buddha-nature' and 'enlightenment'?
Master Mu was lecturing upon Turing equivalence and mentioned the game of chess as an illustrating example. He pointed out that through an appropriate series of moves, a knight can reach any point that a rook can, and vice versa.
A monk said "So the two pieces are equivalent in what they can accomplish." Master Mu said "The false assumption behind your statement renders it both true and false."
Any sufficiently-powerful system
can emulate any other system.
Are they therefore the same?
The answer is more complex than yes or no.
Is this an original story? I may have to cite this one.
Um... well, I made it up.
The idea behind it is hardly original, of course.