Yeah, perhaps refuting is too strong given that the central claim is that we can’t know what is and is not doing computation—which I think is wrong, but requires a more nuanced discussion. However, the narrow claims they made inter-alia were strong enough to refute, specifically by showing that their claims are equivalent to saying the integers are doing arbitrary computation—when making the claim itself requires the computation to take place elsewhere!
Yeah, perhaps refuting is too strong given that the central claim is that we can’t know what is and is not doing computation—which I think is wrong, but requires a more nuanced discussion. However, the narrow claims they made inter-alia were strong enough to refute, specifically by showing that their claims are equivalent to saying the integers are doing arbitrary computation—when making the claim itself requires the computation to take place elsewhere!