On the Complexity of Computing Gödel Numbers
This work addresses a foundational problem in computability theory and algorithmic learning theory, providing incremental insights into complexity classifications.
The paper tackles the problem of computing Gödel numbers for computable sequences and classifies its Weihrauch complexity, revealing significant differences between topological and computability-theoretic classifications.
Given a computable sequence of natural numbers, it is a natural task to find a Gödel number of a program that generates this sequence. It is easy to see that this problem is neither continuous nor computable. In algorithmic learning theory this problem is well studied from several perspectives and one question studied there is for which sequences this problem is at least learnable in the limit. Here we study the problem on all computable sequences and we classify the Weihrauch complexity of it. For this purpose we can, among other methods, utilize the amalgamation technique known from learning theory. As a benchmark for the classification we use closed and compact choice problems and their jumps on natural numbers, and we argue that these problems correspond to induction and boundedness principles, as they are known from the Kirby-Paris hierarchy in reverse mathematics. We provide a topological as well as a computability-theoretic classification, which reveal some significant differences.