Baughn comments on Risks of downloading alien AI via SETI search - Less Wrong

9 Post author: turchin 15 March 2013 10:25AM

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Comment author: Baughn 15 March 2013 11:01:44PM *  2 points [-]

Many of these programs will not terminate

Unfortunately, you cannot prove whether or not an arbitrary program will terminate, meaning the best this scheme will do is provide an upper bound for KC.

Without waiting forever there's no way of knowing if one of the programs smaller than that bound, which hasn't terminated yet, isn't going to eventually terminate and output the string.

Comment author: gwern 15 March 2013 11:41:33PM 1 point [-]

Yes, that's the loophole for Manfred's scheme (if I haven't read into his comment something he didn't intend).