Pointless Friday Computer Geeking

[jducoeur]

So this XKCD comic:

does lead naturally to the question of: what does the Wikipedia Halting Problem look like? That is, is it always possible, based on the topic, to decide whether a given Wikipedia article will ever settle down and stop being the subject of edit wars? Or can you prove that this is formally undecideable?

Comments

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Well, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem came out of formal analysis of a previous attempt to codify all human knowledge...

[serakit.livejournal.com]

Presumably everything fades far enough into the past sooner or later because people will move on to the next thing.

[jducoeur]

While usually true, there are some exceptions. In particular, revenge cycles can last for centuries: when you have two cultures that are just the right distance apart (close enough for constant friction, far enough to keep deep understanding from arising), they can keep arguing more or less forever, at least until something really major changes.

But yes -- most of these things are tempests in teapots from a historical perspective, and are shorter-lived than people realize. (Even the abortion argument is mostly a relatively recent one.)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Human behavior, not being restricted to your petty notions of mathematical logic, blows a big raspberry at the notion that it could be so predicted.