Title: Self-replication and the halting problem

Speaker:
Dr Hiroki Sayama (Director of the Center for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems, Binghamton University, and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Commerce, Waseda University)

Abstract:
This talk discusses a fundamental relationship between self-replication of von Neumann's universal constructors and circular computational processes of universal computers that appear in Turing's original proof of the undecidability of the halting problem. This allows for reinterpretation of a self-replicating biological organism as embodying an attempt to solve the halting problem for a diagonal input in the context of construction.