George:
Thanks for this delightful story (..ies?)
I met Chaitin once for a brief chat and did not like
him: he was too sharp for me (though very friendly).
His quoted idea is something I will keep to use it
against closed-minded physicists (or provide it to
open-minded wifes of them).
John Mikes
--- George Levy <glevy.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> There is a great article entitled "The Limts of
> Reason" by Gregory
> Chaitin in the March Issue of Scientific American
> page 74. I quote:
>
> "So perhaps mathematicians should not try to
> prove everything.
> Sometimes they should try to add new axioms.
> That is what you have
> got to do when you are faced with an irreducible
> fact.....
> Physicists are willing to add new principles,
> new scientific laws,
> to understand new domains of experience...
>
>
> This caused me to think about unprovable physical
> truths or impossible
> measurements. A simple one includes a nice
> reflective component: "what
> do you look like in the mirror with the eyes
> closed?"
>
> I tried it on my wife when she was in a good mood.
> "Darling", I said,
> "did you ever think about what you look like in the
> mirror with your
> eyes closed?"
> "I know what I look like," she said. "I can imagine
> it."
> "Yeah, but you don't really know for sure."
> "I can find out by taking a photograph of myself
> with my eyes closed, if
> I wanted to, but that would be a really stupid thing
> to do."
> Ah ha! Now we are getting somewhere, I thought.
> Maybe I could squeeze in
> the concept of simultaneity a la Einstein.
> Then I turned to her and gave her the coup de grace,
> "Yeah but you won't
> know what you look like at the precise time you look
> in the mirror."
> She looked at me straight in the eyes and said,
> "George, you are giving
> me a headache!"
>
> The moral of the story is: do not experiment or
> argue with your wife.
> You always come out the loser, even if you win.
>
> George
>
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Received on Mon Mar 06 2006 - 11:35:41 PST