Talk:Perspex machine

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I was somewhat dazzled by the line: "The transformation is piecewise continuous, not digital, which makes the theoretical perspex machine a hypercomputer."

Wait... because its transformations are piecewise continuous, it can solve the general halting problem?? Really?! Or do I misunderstand what a hypercomputer is?

Is there a Wikipedia article somewhere that would explain how this is possible? If not, maybe someone should write one. Xezlec 14:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

A hypercomputer could solve a subset of all the halting problems. (The halting problems of the turning machines). But it could have halting problems of it's own which it can't solve. These hyperhalting problems need a hyperhypercomputer to be solved. At least that is how I understood the hyper/super turing computer theory. I don't really get what piecewise continuous transformations help to solve this, and I would really like to see a clear proof.

For more about hypercomputers and superturing see those articles. --Soyweiser 13:58, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Xezlec: Mixing in continuity usually makes solving the halting problem easy. Continuous machines have an infinite number of configurations. The work you need to put in yourself is to map those configurations to functions from N to bool. One of those functions is the halt function. Which means that one of the machines, namely the one with the properly chosen initial configuration correspondiong to the halt function, will be the Oracle. Of course, you won’t know which one, but computing theory (of this kind) does not need to be constructivist — we already passed that point when we put continuity in the mix. --gnirre 14:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

This is either a far fetched theoretical construct (such as the Oracle machine type hypercomputers) or pseudo science at worst. I couldn't find any reliable references to these papers in our university database. Are these constructs even peer reviewed? The website really has some very bold claims: the universe and our body and mind can be explained by perspex machines. I doubt that. --Soyweiser 13:28, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Please dont delete this article! Sure, this Perspex machine is sofisticated nonsense, but for me, I actually realized that thru reading about it in this very wikipedia article. Ok, check out the details, maybe rephrase things, but basically this is a good and useful article, with the "unverified claims" warning in place, and all. Note that this Dr Anderson actually made BBC news, so more people than me will be coming to wikipedia looking for answers (after failing to find them on Dr Anderson's own homepages). --gnirre 14:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it will be deleted that fast. After all it is a theory. Perhaps not a valid one, or a strange theoretical construct. (The fact that the BBC did make it to the news makes this page a keeper). --Soyweiser 15:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Whoops... so there is a deletion proposal. Well then this page is the wrong page to discuss the deletion. Go to the delete pages.--Soyweiser 15:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

The deletion proposal violates the requirement to follow minimal levels of etiquette. It is also inaccurate - the mathematical papers on the site referenced are peer reviewed, albeit not anonymously peer reviewed (and that may be considered a problem). I have seen no evidence that the Perspex machine is a nonsense.

I disagree with the deletion proposal; if the reason to delete it is because it is Time Cubic in logic, and Time Cube hasn't been deleted, why delete this? Basically, it comes down to Time Cubism being the correct interpretation of reality. 4 DAYS IN ONE DAY —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.98.1.164 (talk • contribs).

You are welcome to make case on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Perspex machine. The principle thing which could keep the article would be a good third party review on perspex machines, published in a journal. I'd say the biggest problem, is anderson has drawn some rather wild conclusion, for what seems a fairly solid computer vision system. The turing stuff is rubish, in his paper he states that perspetives are in practices defined over the rationals, so the whole meta-turing arguments don't hold in reality, although its a nice thought experiment to consider a turing machine whose tape is continuous, basically this would be a fractal. The nullity stuff, is old news mathematically, and not really worked through in a suficiently mathematical way. --Salix alba (talk) 23:42, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I also disagree with the proposed deletion; we are talking here about a respected and very well qualified academic from a respectable university. He has released precode and will release experimental code in early 2007. Things like this should not be deleted merely because they offend someone's mathematical sensibilities. 213.192.200.2 12:52, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• Although this is no longer the proper place to discuss the deletion, the last statement requires at least 3 {{fact}} tags;
  1. That he's a respected academic,
  2. That he's a qualified academic (his article doesn't mention a degree),
  3. That he's released precode,
  4. (implied) that the statements made in the article are correct.

An earlier statement, that the SPIE is peer-reviewed, also requires a {{fact}} tag; no journal with more than 6000 volumes can be peer-reviewed, unless there are thousands of reviewers. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• • See Reading Uni page on Anderton answers 1 and 2 (yes). downloads answers 3 (yes). As is common in much computer vision work, most confrences have a minimal review process, but not full peer review. --Salix alba (talk) 16:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Disagree on point 2; no evidence of a degree, which is normally required for "qualification". (And we're not entirely sure he's respected outside of his university.) And I think we would need to put "claimed" on the "transreal" sentence, even if kept. As for peer-reviewed; I read a few of his "papers" referred to from other Wikipedia articles; they do not support the claims of that specific article. The hypercomputing claim is only supported in the sense that a machine with "real" operations and tests can simulate an oracle (computer science). — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:54, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Top line of uni page: Dr James Anderson, BSc, PhD, MBCS, CITP, CSci. Agree on adding claimed. --Salix alba (talk) 17:04, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Noted on Dr. James; but there's no evidence that the docorate is in a science. "BSc" implies it's in "science", and "MBCS" is probably "Master of B? Computer Science", but I don't know about the Ph.D. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:56, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
      • No reason to supose his PhD is not in computer science (apply occams razor). He has published other work peer reviewerd in mainstream computer vision litrature.[1] MBCS is Member of the British Computing Society, CITP and CSci are other society memberships, all of these require some profesional status to gain but do not really carry any academic clout. --Salix alba (talk) 11:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
      • OK. I would think, though, that the university would want to note the subject of his Ph.D. I cannot confirm that any of his publications are not about the perspex machine except for the one of the DFT, but I suppose some of them might be legitimate, and the perspex machine might be legitimate, even if his papers don't demonstrate that. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
      • "MBCS" is "Member of the British Computer Society", and "CITP" is "Chartered Information Technology Professional". Uncle G 01:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
• Legitimacy does depend a lot on what POV you look at things. From a mathematical perspective its not much cop, however when looked at in term of the computer vision field, its about what I would expect. This does not mean its notable enough for wikipedia though. CV is a much more experimental field, lots of researchers develop their own systems to attack the problem in a different way, pretty much everything has serious flaws and will be superseeded at some point in the future. Treated as a variation on a nural-net, a perspex machine is kind of interesting. But he's gone outside his field with the turing and nullaty stuff. --Salix alba (talk) 20:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
  • • • Isn´t it a simple cellular automata at 4D space with a arbitrary rule? --Amaury Carvalho (talk) 20:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)