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I know that there's no such thing as a finitely sized undecidable language. However, does there exist an undecidable language where a finitely sized set of undecidable elements are 'hiding among' an infinite set of decidable elements?

In order to formalize this, let's build a deciding machine that answers $\text{YES}$, $\text{NO}$, or $\text{MAYBE}$. A correct decider for a language may always answer $\text{MAYBE}$, but if it answers $\text{YES}$ or $\text{NO}$ its answer must be correct. Such a decider can always be constructed for any (undecidable) language - in the worst case it simply always returns $\text{MAYBE}$.

Does there exist an undecidable language $L$ for which a correct decider exists that only answers $\text{MAYBE}$ for a finite number of elements of $L$?

orlp
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Let $S$ be the set of elements on which the decider $T$ answers MAYBE. We can construct a new decider $T'$ which correctly decides $L$ as follows:

  • If the input is in $S$, answer the hardwired correct answer.
  • Otherwise, run $T'$.

Hence $L$ is decidable.

This actually shows that if $L$ is undecidable, then every decider for $L$ must make infinitely many mistakes.

Yuval Filmus
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  • I'm not convinced by your answer because your construction assumes knowledge of $S$ during the construction (to allow for the hardwiring). However you did not give a terminating algorithm for finding $S$ given access to $T$, so your overall construction might not terminate. – orlp Nov 27 '20 at 12:27
  • To elaborate on a potential 'just enumerate all $S$ in $L$' rebuttal, even though $S$ is finite, $|S|$ is not given. How do you know you have hardcoded all exceptions and can return your new decider? – orlp Nov 27 '20 at 12:30
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    This is a common misconception. See for example this question. – Yuval Filmus Nov 27 '20 at 13:13
  • @orlp We can prove that such a machine exists - and this answers your question - even if we can't prove which specific machine does the job. – Noah Schweber Dec 07 '20 at 07:20