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Alan Turing
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„The “scanned symbol” is the only one of which the machine is… “directly aware.”“
„If one wants to make a machine mimic the behaviour of the human computer in some complex operation one has to ask him how it is done, and then translate the answer into the form of an instruction table. Constructing instruction tables is usually described as “programming.”“
„Instruction tables will have to be made up by mathematicians with computing experience and perhaps a certain puzzle-solving ability. There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself.“
„Presumably the child-brain is something like a note-book as one buys it from the stationer’s. Rather little mechanism, and lots of blank sheets.“
„A digital computer can usually be regarded as consisting of three parts: (i) Store. (ii) Executive unit. (iii) Control…. The executive unit is the part which carries out the various individual operations involved in a calculation…. It is the duty of the control to see that… [the table of] instructions are obeyed correctly and in the right order…. A typical instruction might say—”Add the number stored in position 6809 to that in 4302 and put the result back into the latter storage position.” Needless to say it would not occur in the machine expressed in English. It would more likely be coded in a form such as 6809430217. Here 17 says which of various possible operations [add] is to be performed on the two numbers…. It will be noticed that the instruction takes up 10 digits and so forms one packet of information…“
„To each computable sequence there corresponds at least one description number, while to no description number does there correspond more than one computable sequence. The computable sequences and numbers are therefore enumerable.“
„The Exclusion Principle is laid down purely for the benefit of the electrons themselves, who might be corrupted (and become dragons or demons) if allowed to associate too freely.“
„If an ɑ-machine prints two kinds of symbols, of which the first kind (called figures) consists entirely of 0 and 1 (the others being called symbols of the second kind), then the machine will be called a computing machine.“
„The view that machines cannot give rise to surprises is due, I believe, to a fallacy to which philosophers and mathematicians are particularly subject. This is the assumption that as soon as a fact is presented to a mind all consequences of that fact spring into the mind simultaneously with it. It is a very useful assumption under many circumstances, but one too easily forgets that it is false.“
„The majority of them seem to be “sub-critical,” i.e., to correspond in this analogy to piles of sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are super-critical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole “theory” consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas.“
„These questions replace our original, “Can machines think?”“
„Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.“
„I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past.“
„The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer.“
„[T]he m-configuration may be changed.“
„The machine may also change the square which is being scanned, but only by shifting it one place to right or left.“
„In some of the configurations in which the scanned square is blank… the machine writes down a new symbol on the scanned square: in other configurations it erases the scanned symbol.“
„The machine is supplied with a “tape” (the analogue of paper) running through it, and divided into sections (called “squares”) each capable of bearing a “symbol.”“
„We may compare a man in the process of computing a real number to a machine which is only capable of a finite number of conditions q1, q2, …, qK which will be called ” m-configurations .”“
„We do not wish to penalise the machine for its inability to shine in beauty competitions, nor to penalise a man for losing in a race against an aeroplane. The conditions of our game make these disabilities irrelevant.“
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