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Comment by sowhatquestion | Hacker News Reader

    there are indeed universal properties of 
    correct code that you can learn from one 
    set of applications and apply to another 
    set of applications

Pardon the speculative thought, but wouldn't a program that detects "universal properties of correct code" be equivalent to a program that detects whether another program will halt? Hence, impossible?

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It's a machine learning based system, so it's probabilistic. You can certainly write programs that can detect when some other programs halt, just not universal ones. For example, it would be relatively trivial to look for a "while true:" loop that has no end conditions.

Halting problem is all arbitrary programs, not a specific one. Be careful in how you apply knowledge.

   While(1):
       Pass

Is trivial to detect. Now make slightly more complex versions of the same.

I think the difference is in one case you are talking about specific properties of specific programs, and in the other you are talking about a universal question about any program.

No, the two are not equivalent.

running programs have state, that's the issue with the halting problem.

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