| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015915)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015915" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2534 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Turing's Machine |
| 225 |
| execution. You might ask what runs the operating system and that is a |
| smaller program called the BIOS. What runs BIOS? An even smaller |
| program called the Bootstrap. Once all this is up and running you have a |
| working computer, which can run any program you throw at it. |
| The problem with programs is they tend to crash - usually at |
| the most inconvenient times. It is often not clear whether a program |
| has truly crashed. It might be stuck in an infinite loop, or it could be |
| calculating the answer to a complex question, such as the answer to life, |
| the Universe, and everything. How would we know? If only I had waited |
| a little longer before rebooting, the program would have run to its end |
| and given me the answer to Douglas Adams' question. |
| It would be very useful, and save a great deal of time, if I had a way |
| of telling whether a program will ever stop. An elegant solution would be |
| to have a second program called 'Halt, which would test the program and |
| output will halt' or 'will crash' as appropriate. It turns out this program |
| would be more than just useful. It could be used as an oracle, capable of |
| answering almost any question imaginable. |
| I could, for example, write a program that says: for every index in |
| Fermat's puzzle try every number and halt if you find a solution greater |
| than 2. Now if I run my halt program on this program and it states will |
| crash', I will have solved Fermat's Last Theorem! Do you see why? |
| If we give 'Halt' an input: a program we are interested in, along with |
| some data, it will tell us if the program finds an answer. If I am trying to |
| solve Fermat's Last Theorem, we will ask it to try every possible index for |
| the equation 3*+4*=5* and halt when it finds a true result greater than 2. |
| If the halt program says yes and halts, you can trace through the program |
| and work out how it did it. The theory would be proved. If the program |
| says no, the theory is disproved. This gives us a way to discover proofs of |
| many mathematical theorems. |
| I could try almost any puzzle using a program with this form. All I |
| need do is put a problem in the following decision format: try all possible |
| options, and then stop and ring a bell if a solution is found. The Halt |
| program would then give the result leading to untold riches, winning all |
| the remaining Clay Mathematics prizes at the very least and earning me |
| $6m. |
| Does such a magical program exist? The answer, sadly, is no. There |
| is no Halt program and the final part of Turing's paper proved there can |
| never be. |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015915 |
|
|
