> Lock yourself away in a room with nothing but pen and paper (no internet, not books) and try to reproduce Goedel's original proof. Then post the attempt here

> Lock yourself away in a room with nothing but pen and paper (no internet, not books) and try to reproduce Goedel's original proof. Then post the attempt here :) We can all agree that would be hard, but your claim that the details are the central thing that makes GP hard is much, much stronger than that. The relevant question would be: How many people alive right now could succeed at your challenge? My guess would be thousands, maybe tens of thousands. And compare that to: The number of people alive who, without any knowledge of GP, could come up with the key insight you describe in your 1 paragraph summary of the proof, and the insight of using godel numbers to label mathematical statements to make that argument rigorous. The answer to that is "somewhere around 0." I get that you're impressed by the proof's details -- they're impressive -- but it seems like an odd take to rate those as more difficult than the incredible creative leaps that produced the high-level ideas behind the proof.