> that sounds more like it. EDIT: I have to read up on it again and again ... the consistency of sufficiently-complex systems cannot be proved within that syste

> that sounds more like it. EDIT: I have to read up on it again and again ... the consistency of sufficiently-complex systems cannot be proved within that system. Nope. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems (GIT) are metalogical[1]. They leak to any (sufficiently-complex) formal system. You can't logic them away by going up a level of abstraction. Let's say you have a (sufficiently-complex) system A which is susceptible to GIT. You can describe A in terms of a meta-system B. By definition, B will also be susceptible to GIT. You can describe B in terms of C, and so on, but every meta-system that follows will still be susceptible to GIT. [1] http://www.mbph.de/Logic/Para/Metalogic.pdf http://www.mbph.de/Logic/Para/Metalogic.pdf