If you could give Turing machines one bonus feature, what would it be?
Some people were practical:
- I would add a more streamlined ability to count.
- Ctrl-F find value
- Writing proofs for me.
- remember marked spot (instead of needing to mark)
- Its head can go to any position on the tape instantly without having to step through the middle steps.
- to be able to jump to a location in the tape not right next to where the head is
Others were silly:
- snack dispenser
- a cool spoiler (illustration below)
- funny hats (illustration below)
- dance a jig
Some were infeasible:
- Always halt for every problem. [editor's note: provably impossible, you impertinent youth!]
And some were downright haunting:
- Express feelings. It would be nice to know how TM feels when in runs forever. Would it be sad? happy? bored? [editor's note: how would the TM know it is running forever? it could just be churning and doing real computation...]
- consciousness
By far the one that struck the deepest chord and has followed me, hounding me into my dreams, was: "teeth." Yikes.
This post's theme word is stenophagous (adj), "feeding on a limited variety of food." The zookeeper found the dietary needs of TMs a challenge; they were among the most stenophagous charges at the mathematical-hypothetical petting zoo.
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