Why it matters

Undecidability limits algorithms. Understanding shapes theoretical bounds.

Advertisement

The architecture

No algorithm terminates deciding for all inputs.

Provable via reduction from halting.

Practical: approximations or restrictions.

UndecidabilityProblemlanguage / questionReduce from haltingprove undecidableApproximate / restrictfor practiceTuring 1936 halting; Rice's theorem generalizes to non-trivial semantic properties
Undecidable.
Advertisement

How it works end to end

Rice's theorem: non-trivial semantic properties undecidable.

Program equivalence, correctness undecidable in general.