Xiaoshu Wang wrote: > I think Alan has mixed the machine consistency to reality. A machine > can only assert the consistency among statements, it cannot verify if a > statement is valid in reality. The latter is done by a social process. Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "machine". A Turing machine cannot, but a generic machine most certainly can. For example, a machine could well verify that the temperature at a certain location is between 20C and 23C at the current time. Given sufficient sensors and technology, there are many factual statements which are fully machine verifiable. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@metalab.unc.edu Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/Received on Saturday, 22 September 2007 10:57:12 UTC
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