From: Bruce W McLain (bunicorn@ptd.net)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 20:35:43 MST
Sorry Joe! Goedel's proof still holds even in a recursive system. A finite
recursive system can still perform only a finite number of operations in a
finite amount of time. The proof demonstrates that "In a consistent system
complex enough to perform simple arithmetic there exists truths expressible
in the system but would require an infinite number of operations to prove."
Therefore it would require an infinite amount of time
Having said that, I have to agree that Goedel's proof does not apply to the
human mind or probably any self-conscious awareness. Not because of
recursion, but because no one that I am aware of has seriously proposed that
the human mind is consistent in the mathematical sense.
----- Original Message -----
From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
To: <virus@lucifer.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 8:17 PM
Subject: Re: virus: Standing my ground (heaven: soul liberation or rapid
synaptic misfire?)
> On 29 Jan 2002 at 16:21, ben wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > [Joe 4]Sorry; self-conscious awareness requires sufficient complexity to
allow for
> > recursivity; such complexity must breach the godelian threshhold.
> >
> > [ben 4] Making your post the third reminder in a 24 hour period that I
really must read
> > "Godel, Escher, Bach"...
> >
> > [Joe 4] Awareness
> > of itself is necessary to the monotheistic definition of a deity (I did
not say
> > awareness of other, for there can be no other for an omnipresent deity).
Such
> > necessary complexity to allow the fulfillment of a necessary condition
for the
> > monotheistic definition of deity is clearly absent in the rather random
and
> > uniform plasmic soup blown out of a Big Bang.
> > [Ben 4] ah but before the Big Bang, when all that energy and matter was
hypercompressed, well
> > that fits the theory rather nicely doesn't it? Of course that would mean
that in the process, the be-
> > all end-all 'god' wouldhave been destroyed...
> >
> OI'll leave it up to Hermit to explain why the very idea of 'before' the
genesis of a
> matter/energy space/time universe is fallacious...
> >
> > > [Ben 3] Hmm gives whole new meaning to the idea that the soul departs
the
> > > body at death...
> > [Joe 4] The DNA resides in the body for a long time after death before
it degrades
> > significantly.
> > [Ben 4] That was an attempt at a bad joke on my part, referring to
yourDNA-soul analogy and
> > one of the more evolutionarily desperate-seeming side effects of sudden
violent death in
> > males...
> >
> You mean, of course, terminal ejaculation.
> >
> > -ben
> >
>
>
>
>
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