{
  "abstract": "The halting problem asks whether a program eventually halts, with unrestricted resources. Engineering systems instead certify bounded halting: given a program, an input, and a step budget T, decide whether the program halts within T steps. This paper studies two of its uses. First, it defines an exact finite-budget problem, placing the simulated program and the checker on the same unit-cost timescale, so the checker can be embedded in an adversarial program. A diagonal argument with explicit additive overhead shows that no fixed deterministic checker decides every instance within any fixed fraction of T below one, for large T. In the nondeterministic case, T bounds the branch depth allowed for a stable observable decision. Second, bounded-halting instances give adversarial tests for finitary universality, since a universal model must support arbitrary finite computations as T grows. The tests check resource growth with T, the absence of a fixed deliberation bound, and later access to intermediate data. They separate a fixed model with extendable external resources, a model family that grows with T, and a larger system built around a fixed component. For machine-learning systems, this identifies the resource growth a universality claim assumes and whether it fails for deployed models.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": "Journal reference: S. Salishev, CYBERNETICS AND PHYSICS, VOL. 15, NO. 2, 2026, 234-242",
  "arxiv": "2611.06303",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Sergey Salishev"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1b1hwxsmdypq8.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2611.06303",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "1b1hwxsmdypq8",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06303",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY-NC-ND 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.AI"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.CC"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.FL"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "math.LO"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2611.06303",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-11-04",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1b1hwxsmdypq8.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-05T15:21:00Z",
      "native_id": "2611.06303",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06303"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "mathematics",
      "origin": "arxiv:math.LO",
      "subfield": "logic-foundations"
    }
  ],
  "title": "An Engineering Reading of the Bounded Halting Problem and Observable Properties of a Universal Machine",
  "title_text": "An Engineering Reading of the Bounded Halting Problem and Observable Properties of a Universal Machine",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-09T00:20:30Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1b1hwxsmdypq8",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": [
    {
      "doi": "10.35470/2226-4116-2026-15-2-234-242",
      "pid": null,
      "relation": "published-as",
      "title": null,
      "venue": null
    }
  ]
}