FOM: RE: Chaitin

[Karl Cooper]

I think some discussion of these issues would be of interest.  Chaitin's
work was recently discussed on www.slashdot.org, which is read by 
many who are probably not on this list.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Raatikainen Panu A K [SMTP:Praatikainen at elo.helsinki.fi]
> Sent:	Monday, March 19, 2001 4:00 AM
> To:	charles silver
> Cc:	fom at math.psu.edu
> Subject:	FOM: Chaitin
> 
> On 16 Mar 01, at 10:01, charles silver wrote:
> 
> >     Are you the person who recently published an article debunking
> > Chaitin's celebrated Godel-like theorem?   And, if so, I wondered
> > whether you've received any response from him disputing your
> > interpretation of his result.
> 
> RE: Yes, that's me. And yes, we had a short round of e-mail 
> exchange with Chaitin on my first paper in JPL (Vol 27, No 6, Dec. 
> 1998) on Chaitin's earlier incompleteness result. I found his reply 
> rather unsatisfying, being at odds with the facts of recursive 
> function theory. But there is also a second paper by me in 
> SYNTHESE Vol. 123 (2000) on Chaitin's later work on halting 
> probability Omega etc. I have not received any responses to that. 
> But anyway, I think I was just pointing out several logical facts 
> challenging the standard interpretation of that work.
> 
> I would be very interested to discuss these issues, if there are 
> people in FOM interested in them.
> 
> 
> Panu 
> 
>