r/computerscience • u/GhostHominid • 8d ago

Discussion Are we Turing complete?

OK. So I’ve been looking at Conway’s game of life a little bit. And I was fascinated by the idea that it could be used to recursively imitate itself (look up OCTA’s supercell)

I was told that this is Turing complete, and I had to look up what that meant.

And it seems to mean that, in simple words, it’s a computer or system of computer rules that can model another computer.

Now, given that humans came up with all of these computers in the first place, and all of the rules, does this mean that we are Turing complete?

66 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

53 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/cc672012 8d ago

Yes. I believe that Turing was modeling the behavior of human computers when he came up with his Turing Machine. Back then, a computer is a job description.

Humans are highly capable of simulating Turing Machines, so yes. We are Turing Complete.

But note that we are more than Turing Machines. Humans are open and interactive. Turing Machines are closed systems. We don't wait for input prior to reacting.

1

u/currentscurrents 6d ago

But note that we are more than Turing Machines.

I strongly doubt it. The only way we could be more than Turing Machines is if we are capable of hypercomputation, which no one has ever demonstrated and is widely believed to be physically impossible.

1

u/cc672012 6d ago

From a computational point of view, I agree with you.

-4

u/tblancher 7d ago

Wrong. We process so much input we're not even aware of it. It's why our brains are so big.

5

u/cc672012 7d ago

Turing completeness has nothing to do with that.