Supertasks do not increase computational power

  • Authors:
  • Oron Shagrir

  • Affiliations:
  • Philosophy and Cognitive Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

  • Venue:
  • Natural Computing: an international journal
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

It is generally assumed that supertasks increase computational power. It is argued, for example, that supertask machines can compute beyond the Turing limit, e.g., compute the halting function. We challenge this assumption. We do not deny that supertask machines can compute beyond the Turing limit. Our claim, rather, is that the (hyper) computational power of these machines is not related to supertasks, but to the "right kind" of computational structure.