I enjoyed this bit:

// When we show this program to industry professionals, they usually figure out the right answer quickly. * A few, especially those who are aware of results in theoretical computer science, sometimes mistakenly think that we can't answer this question, with the rationale “This is an example of the halting problem, which has been proved insoluble”. * In fact, we can reason about the halting behavior for specific programs, including this one.

In other words, where a mid-wit would step through the code (and be right), a high-brow might deems the problem impossible because it fits to a generic class of which this particular instance is trivial.

It's kinda "word thinking" concept where you substitute actual understanding by being able to slap a familiar label on something and then use the label to decide how to feel about it (kinda like feeling differently about a topic based on whether you call it "social justice" which sounds good or "letting criminals roam your city" which sounds bad - whereas in reality it's probably more nuanced and different than either of these labels suggests.)

This should have [2021] in the title.

Interesting that Amazon still thinks there is a place for symbolic, logic-based reasoning, in this era of LLMs.

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