Re: Lobian Machine

From: George Levy <glevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 20:33:20 -0800

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> Godel's result, known as Godel's second incompleteness theorem, is
> that no consistent machine can prove its own consistency:
>
> IF M is consistent then M cannot prove its consistency


Bruno,

After I read your email, we had a gathering of family and friends, and
my head being full of the subject of this post. I wanted to test the
idea of Godel's second incompleteness theorem on the average people just
to see how they would respond. I found the right place in the discussion
to insert the paraphrase:

If I am sane, it is impossible to know for sure that I am sane.

This povoked some hilarity, especially with my kids (young adults) who
probably view me as some kind of nutty professor. While this statement
is mathematically true, it was not considered serious by the people I
was talking with. I guess that the average human has no doubt about his
own sanity.(But my kids had some doubts about mine) One way to prove
that you are crazy is to assert that you are sane. This means that the
average human is crazy! :-)

George
Received on Thu Dec 29 2005 - 23:37:23 PST