4 ms·
What? No, it's math. Theorems are not up to interpretation, emphatically and by design. That's the purpose of math. Gödel's theorems are profoundly interesting
by throwawaymath 8y ago
What? No, it's math. Theorems are not up to interpretation, emphatically and by design. That's the purpose of math.
Gödel's theorems are profoundly interesting in their own right. They also required significant creativity and ingenuity for their time. But if there are conflicting "interpretations" of what they "actually mean", then that means most must be incorrect (or more charitably, extremely incomplete).
Frankly I'm flabbergasted you would compare (mis)interpretations of mathematical theorems to the legitimate subjectivity inherent to literary criticism...
- alasdair_ 8y agoNote that I said “reading articles” about what Godel really meant, not “reading agodel’s papers” - the point was that once we become that far removed from the underlying work and start mostly talking about individual people’s interpretation of that work as the focal point of the article, it reminds me of literary criticism more than anything else. Additionally, interpretations are always subjective because interpretation of something is unique to an individual subjective viewpoint.