Collatz Conjecture: Decided Or Undecidable
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - 03:00
in Psychology & Sociology
Undecidability is weird, much weirder than quantum theory, which is benign by comparison. Let me give a simple example for something that may well be undecidable:Take any natural number N. If it is even, divide it by two. If it is odd, then first multiply by three and add one before you also divide by two. This gives you a new number N1 which is either N/2 or (3N + 1)/2. Now repeat the same procedure over and over again, i.e. look at whether N1 is even or odd and get either N2 = N1/2 or - well you know what.read more
