RE: virus: MEME UPDATE: To Censor Or Not?

Schneider John (JSCHNEID@hanoverdirect.com)
Tue, 17 Dec 1996 00:45:49 -0500


Dave Pape wrote:
[clip]
> Godel! That's the fella. And it's a THEOREM, is it? Excellent...
> the problem is, now I need to UNDERSTAND it. See you all in a
> couple of years...

It's discussed through and through in Hofstadter's book "Godel,
Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid". I first dscovered it in
Rudy Rucker's "Infinity and the Mind". Actually, the understand-
ing of the theorem is the easy part. It says, basically: in any
formal system determining truths, there will be truths which the
system cannot determine. [Hence the similarity I see between
this theorem and your observation that science gets all hazy and
'I-dunno'ish at the quantum level: truths it cannot determine?]

- JPSchneider
- jschneid@hanoverdirect.com