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In Sipser's text, when proving that there exists an oracle $A$ such that $P^A \ne NP^A$, he writes:

Let $M_1, M_2, \ldots$ be a list of all polynomial time oracle TMs.

I understand that there are countably many Turing machines, but aren't there uncountably many oracles?

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2 Answers 2

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There are $2^{\aleph_0}$ possible oracles, but when fixing an oracle $A\subseteq \Sigma^*$, there are only countably many Turing machines $M^A$ with access to the oracle $A$.

Remember that a Turing machine with access to some oracle is defined in the same manner as a normal Turing machine, but with an additional operation (they can query the oracle). They have a special tape on which they can write a query, and say, three additional special states $q_{ask},q_{yes},q_{no}$. Upon entering $q_{ask}$, if $s\in\Sigma^*$ is the content of the query tape, the machine enters either $q_{yes}/q_{no}$, depending on whether or not $s\in A$.

Nothing stops us from encoding such machines as strings, in the same way we encode regular Turing machines, hence we only have countably many such machines.

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  • $\begingroup$ Are you saying that "Let $M_1$,$M_2$,… be a list of all polynomial time oracle TMs." means: fix an oracle $A$ and consider all TMs that have $A$ as an oracle? I was reading this as "consider all TMs with all possible oracles"... $\endgroup$
    – theQman
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 15:10
  • $\begingroup$ First option (otherwise as you said, you have uncountably many). $\endgroup$
    – Ariel
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 15:12
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There are uncountably many oracles. ​ However, those are sold separately:
The oracle Turing machine only comes with an interface for
interacting with whatever oracle one might choose to use it with.

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