| ▲ | lacewing 3 hours ago | |
Right, if you're a software engineer, the realization that the two theorems are nearly-equivalent really takes the air out of a lot of the existential philosophizing around Gödel's incompleteness. Gödel's argument basically says that any system of mathematics powerful enough to implement basic arithmetic is a computer. This shouldn't be surprising to software engineers because the equivalency between Boolean logic and arithmetic is easy to show. And if you have a computer, you can build algorithms whose outcome can't be programmatically decided by other algorithms. | ||
| ▲ | cobbal 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | |
I think that's selling the theorems a little short. A math system with arithmetic is equal to, or more powerful than, a computer. For an example, even classical logic comes with the law of excluded middle that can say (internally) if a program halts or not. Incompleteness applies to all the stronger systems as well. | ||
| ▲ | mspn an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | |
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