14 ms·

Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death

106 points by Hooke 3y ago

Xcelerate 3y ago
Funny this came up. Just today I was reading about a letter Gödel wrote to von Neumann in 1956 asking him about an idea relating to the precursors of P vs NP and Hutter search (https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/46aef9c4-288b-457d-ab3e-bb6cb1a4b88e/content https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/46ae...). Gödel was quite ahead of his time. Even though he tended to prefer theory over practical applications, it would be really interesting to have his thoughts on prediction and induction as they relate to the recent advances in machine learning.
- atticora 3y ago
  > it would be really interesting to have his thoughts on prediction and induction as they relate to the recent advances in machine learning. For a possibly not useless proxy, train an LLM on his oeuvre and ask it.
  - teacpde 3y ago
    I can understand the downvotes, but at the same time it does makes sense, especially given the target is a logician.
  - mingus88 3y ago
    You’ll get an answer with all of the linguistic flavor of Gödel’s texts and absolutely none of his insights or reasoning. LLM is a language model, not Deep Thought from the hitchhikers guide.
    - atticora 3y ago
      It works on embeddings, which are concepts. So it would at least be manipulating a similarly weighted network of concepts, though much shallower. It would be an answer from his literal domain of discourse. It would be evocative rather than authoritative.
      - piaste 3y ago
        What you describe would be literally worse than nothing. The use of those concepts would make about as much sense as the use of topological concepts in a Lacanian text. A typewriting monkey in a trenchcoat.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    > For a possibly not useless proxy, train an LLM on his oeuvre and ask it. all major LLMs are likely already trained on his works, so you can already ask: "Hi, ChatGPT, pretend to be Kurt Godel"
- cushpush 3y ago
  Reflecting deeply on Gödel's Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems, I'd like to contribute to the discussion. The essence of Completeness lies in the notion that a system, constructed on foundational axioms (such as facts, truths, or mathematical operations), encompasses all possible facts derivable within its framework. Interestingly, this completeness paradoxically begets contradictions. It implies the existence of 'axiomatic islands' - distinct realms of truth where a fact valid in one may contradict another in a different realm. Hence, Completeness inherently entails contradiction. On the other hand, Incompleteness, which targets a specific subset of all possible truths or derivations, can achieve absolute consistency by avoiding these contradictions. This is because it deliberately excludes certain 'axiomatic regions,' maintaining coherence within its defined scope but at the expense of being incomplete. Gödel's genius lay in unveiling the deceptive nature of mathematics when navigating these axiomatic territories. His theorems present a profound duality: the local context, where truths are confined to specific axiomatic systems, and the universal context, which can be akin to an 'ultimate truth' in spiritual terms. This ultimate truth transcends individual systems, offering a broader, more holistic understanding.
  - danans 3y ago
    > This ultimate truth transcends individual systems, offering a broader, more holistic understanding. But the unknowability of that so-called "ultimate truth" implies that it's not offering anything, much less any understanding. The article says Gödel thought that escape hatch for these contradictions is death, because all the local consistency and rationality hints at some greater consistency that must be there. However, that sounds a lot like wishful thinking.
    - cushpush 3y ago
      Your insights on the inherent contradictions in rational frameworks, especially in the context of Gödel's Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems, bring us to an intriguing crossroads. Initially, Gödel’s Completeness Theorem suggests that within a certain logical system, all truths can be proven. However, his subsequent Incompleteness Theorem introduces a profound paradox: there are truths which, though existent within the system, cannot be proven by it. This contradiction between completeness and incompleteness in logic itself leads us to question: can these contradictions be reconciled to provide clarity? Here, we might consider shifting our perspective from a purely rational approach to one that embraces intentionality and clarity. The journey from understanding Gödel’s theorems to grappling with the notion of contradictions could be seen as a metaphor for our search for truth. It’s not merely about accumulating information or solving logical puzzles; it's about the intentional pursuit of clarity. This pursuit often takes us beyond the realm of intellectual reasoning into a space where understanding becomes more about intuition and less about calculation. As we delve deeper into this journey, we arrive at a crucial realization: perhaps the reconciliation of these contradictions and the understanding of 'ultimate truth' is less about logical resolution and more about experiential realization. In this light, truth is not something to be dissected in the confines of rational thought alone but to be lived and experienced. The clarity we seek may not lie in the resolution of logical paradoxes but in embracing the experiential wisdom that comes from directly engaging with these truths. Thus, while Gödel’s work brilliantly navigates the complexities of logical systems, it also inadvertently points us toward a different kind of resolution - one that is realized not through further analysis but through personal experience. In essence, the journey from completeness to incompleteness, from information to intentionality, leads us to a profound experiential understanding, an ultimate truth that is realized rather than deduced.
fsckboy 3y ago
TLDR Godel believed we lived in a rational world. "Precisely in virtue of the fact that our lives consist in unfulfilled or spoiled potential makes him confident that this lifetime is but a staging ground for things to come. But, again, that is only if the world is rationally structured."
- Detrytus 3y ago
  Yes, once you discover limitations of logic you start hedging your bets by believing in illogical things :)
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/real-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/real-3
  - miles 3y ago
    That comic could just as easily have displayed these 3 quotes instead: Einstein: "I believe in Spinoza's God." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_vi... Schrödinger: "Consciousness, by its very nature, exists only in the singular. I would like to say: the total number of all 'consciousnesses' is always just 'one'." https://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger https://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger Gödel: "God must exist." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_ontological_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_ontological_proof
- nkjnlknlk 3y ago
  > I like Jordan Peterson's evolutionary take on these philosophical questions Why when actual evolutionary biologists disagree with Peterson on most of his "takes"?
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    Peterson's a psychologist, an important field that many evolutionary biologists and HNers sadly don't quite understand, though they do very good work otherwise.
IshKebab 3y ago
[flagged]
- Xcelerate 3y ago
  > I don't think it's news that clever people can believe utter nonsense Not that I necessarily agree with Godel’s specific views on the topic, but why do you get to determine what is “utter nonsense”? There’s clearly no consensus on the matter nor has there been for most of human existence. We’re not talking about some fringe belief like “brushing teeth is bad” that Feynman held.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    I happen to disagree with the statements as presented but what he wrote is well reasoned in many aspects and he can bring to bear an incredible amount of intelligence to the matter. Like using the incompleteness theorem to argue that materialism (the belief that the only things true in this universe are what we can observe which is actually a core tenet underpinning the science philosophy since the enlightenment) must be false since incompleteness suggests there must be true things in the universe that can’t be proven through the laws within the universe. It’s a clever argument. The underpinning idea that the universe is rational seems like a leap and I’m sad his reasoning behind that isn’t articulated better. To me chaos theory suggests there’s probably no rationality and entropy suggest that order and rationality is a temporary ephemeral local phenomenon that degrades over time. While I disagree with Gödel on this, I wouldn’t be so bold as to discount his thoughts on the topic out of hand because they are sincerely argued by a person of great intelligence and intellect from their genuine exploration of the idea rather than appeals to authority or coming at it from a place of ignorance. If he’s wrong, his reasoning could still yield insights in how to approach the world.
  - spywaregorilla 3y ago
    Because its one of hundreds of equally convoluted notions with no preferential evidence and fairly obvious flaws despite being supposedly divinely from an immaculate being and because it transcribes magical specialness to something that's frankly mundane. What happens to the stream of outputs of this physical process when the physical process stops? I have a good guess.
pmarreck 3y ago
Hopefully as an FYI that is free of too much skeptical criticism (I mean... I actually get it, but I just don't want to deal with negativity right now), there's actually a rapidly growing number of NDE accounts on YouTube right now. I am putting together a playlist of the most compelling ones: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvnDbwjRqIOkgR1eUMfpnk9_OT6Fc_5vT https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvnDbwjRqIOkgR1eUMfpn... Some of these are from well-educated people like doctors, former skeptics and at least 1 neuroscientist.
- ScoobleDoodle 3y ago
  NDE is an initialism for “near death experience” here.
- csharpminor 3y ago
  I’ve noticed these near-death-experience videos coming up in my recommendations and found it truly odd. They don’t seem to have anything to do with what I normally watch. I have to wonder if they’re the top of the funnel for religion campaigns like “hegetsus”.
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    That's interesting to me because they showed up in mine but I'd already expressed interest. I don't know why they're being tossed at you. I honestly don't believe there's much money in the "NDE space". Certainly less than "hegetsus". Which is funny because the vast majority of NDE accounts really make all of the most popular world religions look pretty wrong (including Christianity, although its message of love over all remains... Not that its adherents follow that much or anything).
- stvltvs 3y ago
  Skepticism is indispensable precisely because smart people believe dumb ideas all the time. It's our only defense against flimflam and bad reasoning.
  - mistermann 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
monero-xmr 3y ago
[flagged]
- babypuncher 3y ago
  Because you cannot yet explain something, it must be God? Usually when something appears to violate causality, that doesn't end up being the case. The unexpectedness of the result is caused by our own incomplete understanding of the physics at play. So far none of these have ended up pointing to some supernatural entity secretly judging us.
- timkam 3y ago
  If so, let's start with the former (god) and point us not only to the proof, but also to the theorem and the underlying definitions. There are many logicians with a scientific interest in god, religion, and related concepts. Why not be open minded, after all? But we should expect more rigor in this case.
- aatd86 3y ago
  What do we really know (most of us) besides that we exist? Nothing. It's funny that a lot of people believe things they don't know about and most of them are judged perfectly sane :o) The only real thing I personally believe is existence because it is impredicative. That's true logic. The rest is hogwash until proven otherwise. (I do believe in some fringe stuff from personal experience but that probably has a perfectly normal explanation, I just miss the data to explain it for now)
teacpde 3y ago
If I read the article correctly, Gödel's rationale is pretty much "The world is orderly organized, therefore after life is supposed to exist"? I must have read it wrong, because I couldn't see the causality at all.
nonameiguess 3y ago
Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this? Putting aside that smart people in one realm are often quite irrational outside of their expertise, e.g. Isaac Newton being super dedicated to alchemy, Jack Parsons at JPL believing he could summon demons, there is also a quite obvious limitation to this line of evidence. I have very good reason to believe I'm going to survive the next five minutes. That doesn't mean I'm going to "survive" in the sense that we care about regarding why religions draw people in, that is, even conclusive proof we survive past bodily death doesn't make us immortal. An immaterial soul that lingers to experience more stuff for another 20 minutes hardly makes a difference, but even if we can conclusively prove near-death experiences are real, that's all we'd be proving. Same thing with the ontological argument. Even if you can convince yourself the universe must have some kind of intelligent creator that made it on purpose, that does not imply this creator has any kind of human-intelligible personality and monitors or cares what we do, let alone that it must be the Christian creator or any other specific religion's idea of what a god is. Ironically, my wife put on just this morning an episode of Rick and Morty in which Morty gets trapped in the Roy game and Rick has to go in and convince everyone they're in a video game and are really part of a larger reality, which was meant to be a parody of religion. That is, their universe truly did have an intelligent creator, but they were NPCs in a video game and the larger reality is they were really a 14 year-old boy in the real universe. We have no particularly good reason to prefer a priori Christianity versus Hinduism versus we're all 14 year-old boys trapped in a video game just because we're convinced we have a creator and some part of us survives death in this particular simulation. Notably, the real Morty is still going to die in the real world.
- ffhhj 3y ago
  > Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this? The scientific method proposes begining with conjectures, have Gödel's afterlife hypothesis been disproved? Could it be disproved? Can it trigger thoughts in an intelligence? Are those thoughts valued?
  - zvmaz 3y ago
    You can posit the existence all sorts of entities as "hypotheses that have not been disproved". See for instance Russell's teapot [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
anonzzzies 3y ago
Math people seem to have this more than other engineering/science etc ; math, and this is actual bloody Godel, seems so perfect and beautiful that is has to have a creator. Everything else is incredibly sloppy (including most software).
- aragonite 3y ago
  Well, Maxwell was so impressed by the perfect similarity of the hydrogen molecules he concluded that they must have been created! > No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. > None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural. > On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self existent. > Thus we have been led, along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at which Science must stop. ... Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing ... > ... But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built — the foundation stones of the material universe — remain unbroken and unworn. > They continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him Who in the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist. https://victorianweb.org/science/maxwell/molecules.html https://victorianweb.org/science/maxwell/molecules.html
  - nprateem 3y ago
    They never thought of infinite multiverses with random variations in each, and survivor bias.
noncoml 3y ago
If there is afterlife and I die today will I be in the mental state I was just before I died? If so is my grandmother that had Alzheimer's destined to experience the eternity in that horrible state?
- networkchad 3y ago
  By my understanding the answer according to Christian belief is no. Your body is restored to its fully capability when you enter the kingdom of heaven.
erikson 3y ago
Kary Mullis the Nobel award winning inventor of PCR did too. He ends his book with this notion.
- saulpw 3y ago
  Kary Mullis was/is also an AIDS dissident, which kind of tarnishes his intellectual reputation.
- defrost 3y ago
  Also an AGW denier, believer in the supernatural, got high on his own supply of home synthesis LSD, and all round poster boy of Nobel disease.
CooCooCaCha 3y ago
A reminder that even smart people are human and can get caught up in irrationality.
javajosh 3y ago
I rather like to believe that the universe is infinite[1], and that the laws of physics change imperceptibly across long distances, meaning that our observable part has properties that helped life, and intelligent life, evolve[2]. There does seem to be a compelling negentropic "urge" present at almost every level of physical reality, that complexity accretes over time in a manner that almost seems designed[3]. This idea preserves both the notion that the universe is rational in some sense, AND that we occupy no special place in it. Indeed, one could see the biosphere of earth, and humans, as merely data pointing to a particular bundle of physical constants in this local region. I do not believe there is a heaven unless we build one. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  The fun thing about infinite is that it means there are an infinite number of planets with you in it typing exactly this post.
  - javajosh 3y ago
    I've heard this before, of course [1]. And it may be. But it doesn't really matter because far-flung parts of the universe cannot interact with each other. Which assumes universality of some physical laws, like relativity. An assumption which cannot really be tested. Even if aliens have FTL, it will, by hypothesis, only function in their part of the universe, and so cease working in ours. In truth, I'm quite happy with the physical laws we have. It means that we are protected by a strong natural barrier. It gives us time to figure out how to become a great civilization without interference of a conqueror. Odds are against us[2], of course, but that need not stop us from giving it the old college try! 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
george-in-sd 3y ago
Article doesn't really really explain the proof of god - but a version of the proof is here https://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.4526.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.4526.pdf
- Balgair 3y ago
  Thanks for the link! To add to it: I guess this all hinges on what 'positive' means. Christ, I sound just like Socrates now, don't I? Glad it's Friday.
layer8 3y ago
> The idea that everything in the world has meaning is, by the way, the exact analogue of the principle that everything has a cause on which the whole of science is based.’ Gödel – just like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whom he idolised – believed that everything in the world has a reason for its being so and not otherwise. This is the core mistake, I believe, to assume that causation implies meaning, instead of causation just being a logical correlation, and meaning being a construction of the human mind. It’s interesting, though, that Gödel took his incompleteness theorems as an indication that materialism (or naturalism) can’t be the truth, while still thinking that the world is rational.
- hirvi74 3y ago
  > This is the core mistake, I believe, to assume that causation implies meaning, instead of causation just being a logical correlation, and meaning being a construction of the human mind. I agree with you. If anything, saying everything having a reason seem to me like applying human interpretation to Determinism.
- Balgair 3y ago
  I mean, such an epic proof would bias one to think that the world is rational. Spending that much time in logic-land would do that to anyone. I think that his assumption that: 'meaning' and 'causation' are the same thing, is similarly tied to his works. For someone like Godel, I'd imagine that he has no conception that they could be different.
imiric 3y ago
> His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this: > If the world is rationally organised and has meaning, then it must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of possibilities for personal development and relationships to others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it? Far from my petty mind to challenge a great thinker like Gödel, but I don't follow this line of thinking. First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it. On an atomic level matter follows specific rules, yes, and we extrapolate a certain order from this on a higher level. But I don't see how any of it can be defined as rational, or having any sort of deeper meaning. Even if we assume that to be true, why would that be a reason to believe that humans are expected to deliver some sort of "meaning" to the universe? And why would that entitle us to immortality? This all sounds deeply egotistical. > Only the human being can come into a better existence through learning, that is, give his life more meaning. I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. As we have found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life, though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all. I don't know. I'm not well read in philosophy, and my only exposure to it was during a semester at college, but this particular philosophy reads like someone trying to bring peace about mortality to their elder mother, and not like a fully fleshed out line of thinking. Which is fine. Life is indeed strange and confusing, and we should find peace in whatever way we can, but maybe there's a reason why these thoughts were never made public.
- kevindamm 3y ago
  > I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. As we have found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life, though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all. Instead bound by substrate and power grid that are both inefficient and minimally redundant. I'd wager more on the meat sacks.
  - namaria 3y ago
    Systems that can reproduce themselves are way more likely to endure than systems that need to be held together from the outside. In 5000 years I think it's more likely that there will be people than that there will be machines.
jackbravo 3y ago
> And because the correspondence was private, he did not feel the need to hide his true views, which he might have done in more formal academic settings and among his colleagues at the IAS I don't think that being private necessarily means that it is showing his true views. In private, we often feel more relaxed and express ourselves differently than in public. But in private conversations, you can express a point of view in one conversation and a different one in another. We often tend to accommodate our audience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_accommodation_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_accommodation_th...
jarek83 3y ago
What if all our existence, it has a meaning, but it's not what we hope it is. We exist to develop as evolution becoming more complex, is also evidently more energy 'consuming', or actually to hint the following question, dispersing. What if the only reason we exist is... what if we are just a tool for... entropy?
varjag 3y ago
I wonder what Gödel would have thought of Wolfram's opinion on physics. According to that the reality is a kind of superposition of all possible combinations among all possible abstract mathematical concepts to which we have only very restricted, macroscopic insight. That makes mathematics objective and primary structure of the Universe and feeds right in the rationality canon. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-h...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
swayvil 3y ago
Arguing for an afterlife is probably a wrong turn. Better to see it for yourself (in a way that doesn't involve dying of course.) The far reaches of meditation (dhyana, yogic self-cultivation) can provide such. But that requires a lot of work and a deviant lifestyle. Something a rare few are prepared to invest in.
- ganzuul 3y ago
  Bhakti is much faster.
  - swayvil 3y ago
    Faster for what?
joquarky 3y ago
Anyone interested in this subject may be interested in a recently published book: "Notes on Complexity" by Neil Theise A good chunk of the book goes into details on Gödel's interests in metaphysics (including this topic). The book is generally a rational exploration of ideas that cross-cut metaphysics, spirituality, and science, and it goes into dialog and correspondence among some deep thinkers in science and philosophy in the past century or so.

106 points by Hooke 3y ago

Funny this came up. Just today I was reading about a letter Gödel wrote to von Neumann in 1956 asking him about an idea relating to the precursors of P vs NP and Hutter search (https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/46aef9c4-288b-457d-ab3e-bb6cb1a4b88e/content https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/46ae...). Gödel was quite ahead of his time. Even though he tended to prefer theory over practical applications, it would be really interesting to have his thoughts on prediction and induction as they relate to the recent advances in machine learning.

atticora 3y ago
> it would be really interesting to have his thoughts on prediction and induction as they relate to the recent advances in machine learning. For a possibly not useless proxy, train an LLM on his oeuvre and ask it.
- teacpde 3y ago
  I can understand the downvotes, but at the same time it does makes sense, especially given the target is a logician.
- mingus88 3y ago
  You’ll get an answer with all of the linguistic flavor of Gödel’s texts and absolutely none of his insights or reasoning. LLM is a language model, not Deep Thought from the hitchhikers guide.
  - atticora 3y ago
    It works on embeddings, which are concepts. So it would at least be manipulating a similarly weighted network of concepts, though much shallower. It would be an answer from his literal domain of discourse. It would be evocative rather than authoritative.
    - piaste 3y ago
      What you describe would be literally worse than nothing. The use of those concepts would make about as much sense as the use of topological concepts in a Lacanian text. A typewriting monkey in a trenchcoat.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > For a possibly not useless proxy, train an LLM on his oeuvre and ask it. all major LLMs are likely already trained on his works, so you can already ask: "Hi, ChatGPT, pretend to be Kurt Godel"
cushpush 3y ago
Reflecting deeply on Gödel's Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems, I'd like to contribute to the discussion. The essence of Completeness lies in the notion that a system, constructed on foundational axioms (such as facts, truths, or mathematical operations), encompasses all possible facts derivable within its framework. Interestingly, this completeness paradoxically begets contradictions. It implies the existence of 'axiomatic islands' - distinct realms of truth where a fact valid in one may contradict another in a different realm. Hence, Completeness inherently entails contradiction. On the other hand, Incompleteness, which targets a specific subset of all possible truths or derivations, can achieve absolute consistency by avoiding these contradictions. This is because it deliberately excludes certain 'axiomatic regions,' maintaining coherence within its defined scope but at the expense of being incomplete. Gödel's genius lay in unveiling the deceptive nature of mathematics when navigating these axiomatic territories. His theorems present a profound duality: the local context, where truths are confined to specific axiomatic systems, and the universal context, which can be akin to an 'ultimate truth' in spiritual terms. This ultimate truth transcends individual systems, offering a broader, more holistic understanding.
- danans 3y ago
  > This ultimate truth transcends individual systems, offering a broader, more holistic understanding. But the unknowability of that so-called "ultimate truth" implies that it's not offering anything, much less any understanding. The article says Gödel thought that escape hatch for these contradictions is death, because all the local consistency and rationality hints at some greater consistency that must be there. However, that sounds a lot like wishful thinking.
  - cushpush 3y ago
    Your insights on the inherent contradictions in rational frameworks, especially in the context of Gödel's Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems, bring us to an intriguing crossroads. Initially, Gödel’s Completeness Theorem suggests that within a certain logical system, all truths can be proven. However, his subsequent Incompleteness Theorem introduces a profound paradox: there are truths which, though existent within the system, cannot be proven by it. This contradiction between completeness and incompleteness in logic itself leads us to question: can these contradictions be reconciled to provide clarity? Here, we might consider shifting our perspective from a purely rational approach to one that embraces intentionality and clarity. The journey from understanding Gödel’s theorems to grappling with the notion of contradictions could be seen as a metaphor for our search for truth. It’s not merely about accumulating information or solving logical puzzles; it's about the intentional pursuit of clarity. This pursuit often takes us beyond the realm of intellectual reasoning into a space where understanding becomes more about intuition and less about calculation. As we delve deeper into this journey, we arrive at a crucial realization: perhaps the reconciliation of these contradictions and the understanding of 'ultimate truth' is less about logical resolution and more about experiential realization. In this light, truth is not something to be dissected in the confines of rational thought alone but to be lived and experienced. The clarity we seek may not lie in the resolution of logical paradoxes but in embracing the experiential wisdom that comes from directly engaging with these truths. Thus, while Gödel’s work brilliantly navigates the complexities of logical systems, it also inadvertently points us toward a different kind of resolution - one that is realized not through further analysis but through personal experience. In essence, the journey from completeness to incompleteness, from information to intentionality, leads us to a profound experiential understanding, an ultimate truth that is realized rather than deduced.

fsckboy 3y ago

TLDR Godel believed we lived in a rational world. "Precisely in virtue of the fact that our lives consist in unfulfilled or spoiled potential makes him confident that this lifetime is but a staging ground for things to come. But, again, that is only if the world is rationally structured."

Detrytus 3y ago
Yes, once you discover limitations of logic you start hedging your bets by believing in illogical things :)
spywaregorilla 3y ago
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/real-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/real-3
- miles 3y ago
  That comic could just as easily have displayed these 3 quotes instead: Einstein: "I believe in Spinoza's God." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_vi... Schrödinger: "Consciousness, by its very nature, exists only in the singular. I would like to say: the total number of all 'consciousnesses' is always just 'one'." https://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger https://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger Gödel: "God must exist." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_ontological_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_ontological_proof
nkjnlknlk 3y ago
> I like Jordan Peterson's evolutionary take on these philosophical questions Why when actual evolutionary biologists disagree with Peterson on most of his "takes"?
- fsckboy 3y ago
  Peterson's a psychologist, an important field that many evolutionary biologists and HNers sadly don't quite understand, though they do very good work otherwise.

IshKebab 3y ago

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Xcelerate 3y ago
> I don't think it's news that clever people can believe utter nonsense Not that I necessarily agree with Godel’s specific views on the topic, but why do you get to determine what is “utter nonsense”? There’s clearly no consensus on the matter nor has there been for most of human existence. We’re not talking about some fringe belief like “brushing teeth is bad” that Feynman held.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  I happen to disagree with the statements as presented but what he wrote is well reasoned in many aspects and he can bring to bear an incredible amount of intelligence to the matter. Like using the incompleteness theorem to argue that materialism (the belief that the only things true in this universe are what we can observe which is actually a core tenet underpinning the science philosophy since the enlightenment) must be false since incompleteness suggests there must be true things in the universe that can’t be proven through the laws within the universe. It’s a clever argument. The underpinning idea that the universe is rational seems like a leap and I’m sad his reasoning behind that isn’t articulated better. To me chaos theory suggests there’s probably no rationality and entropy suggest that order and rationality is a temporary ephemeral local phenomenon that degrades over time. While I disagree with Gödel on this, I wouldn’t be so bold as to discount his thoughts on the topic out of hand because they are sincerely argued by a person of great intelligence and intellect from their genuine exploration of the idea rather than appeals to authority or coming at it from a place of ignorance. If he’s wrong, his reasoning could still yield insights in how to approach the world.
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  Because its one of hundreds of equally convoluted notions with no preferential evidence and fairly obvious flaws despite being supposedly divinely from an immaculate being and because it transcribes magical specialness to something that's frankly mundane. What happens to the stream of outputs of this physical process when the physical process stops? I have a good guess.

pmarreck 3y ago

Hopefully as an FYI that is free of too much skeptical criticism (I mean... I actually get it, but I just don't want to deal with negativity right now), there's actually a rapidly growing number of NDE accounts on YouTube right now. I am putting together a playlist of the most compelling ones: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvnDbwjRqIOkgR1eUMfpnk9_OT6Fc_5vT https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvnDbwjRqIOkgR1eUMfpn... Some of these are from well-educated people like doctors, former skeptics and at least 1 neuroscientist.

ScoobleDoodle 3y ago
NDE is an initialism for “near death experience” here.
csharpminor 3y ago
I’ve noticed these near-death-experience videos coming up in my recommendations and found it truly odd. They don’t seem to have anything to do with what I normally watch. I have to wonder if they’re the top of the funnel for religion campaigns like “hegetsus”.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  That's interesting to me because they showed up in mine but I'd already expressed interest. I don't know why they're being tossed at you. I honestly don't believe there's much money in the "NDE space". Certainly less than "hegetsus". Which is funny because the vast majority of NDE accounts really make all of the most popular world religions look pretty wrong (including Christianity, although its message of love over all remains... Not that its adherents follow that much or anything).
stvltvs 3y ago
Skepticism is indispensable precisely because smart people believe dumb ideas all the time. It's our only defense against flimflam and bad reasoning.
- mistermann 3y ago

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monero-xmr 3y ago

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babypuncher 3y ago
Because you cannot yet explain something, it must be God? Usually when something appears to violate causality, that doesn't end up being the case. The unexpectedness of the result is caused by our own incomplete understanding of the physics at play. So far none of these have ended up pointing to some supernatural entity secretly judging us.
timkam 3y ago
If so, let's start with the former (god) and point us not only to the proof, but also to the theorem and the underlying definitions. There are many logicians with a scientific interest in god, religion, and related concepts. Why not be open minded, after all? But we should expect more rigor in this case.
aatd86 3y ago
What do we really know (most of us) besides that we exist? Nothing. It's funny that a lot of people believe things they don't know about and most of them are judged perfectly sane :o) The only real thing I personally believe is existence because it is impredicative. That's true logic. The rest is hogwash until proven otherwise. (I do believe in some fringe stuff from personal experience but that probably has a perfectly normal explanation, I just miss the data to explain it for now)

teacpde 3y ago

If I read the article correctly, Gödel's rationale is pretty much "The world is orderly organized, therefore after life is supposed to exist"? I must have read it wrong, because I couldn't see the causality at all.

nonameiguess 3y ago

Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this? Putting aside that smart people in one realm are often quite irrational outside of their expertise, e.g. Isaac Newton being super dedicated to alchemy, Jack Parsons at JPL believing he could summon demons, there is also a quite obvious limitation to this line of evidence. I have very good reason to believe I'm going to survive the next five minutes. That doesn't mean I'm going to "survive" in the sense that we care about regarding why religions draw people in, that is, even conclusive proof we survive past bodily death doesn't make us immortal. An immaterial soul that lingers to experience more stuff for another 20 minutes hardly makes a difference, but even if we can conclusively prove near-death experiences are real, that's all we'd be proving. Same thing with the ontological argument. Even if you can convince yourself the universe must have some kind of intelligent creator that made it on purpose, that does not imply this creator has any kind of human-intelligible personality and monitors or cares what we do, let alone that it must be the Christian creator or any other specific religion's idea of what a god is. Ironically, my wife put on just this morning an episode of Rick and Morty in which Morty gets trapped in the Roy game and Rick has to go in and convince everyone they're in a video game and are really part of a larger reality, which was meant to be a parody of religion. That is, their universe truly did have an intelligent creator, but they were NPCs in a video game and the larger reality is they were really a 14 year-old boy in the real universe. We have no particularly good reason to prefer a priori Christianity versus Hinduism versus we're all 14 year-old boys trapped in a video game just because we're convinced we have a creator and some part of us survives death in this particular simulation. Notably, the real Morty is still going to die in the real world.

ffhhj 3y ago
> Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this? The scientific method proposes begining with conjectures, have Gödel's afterlife hypothesis been disproved? Could it be disproved? Can it trigger thoughts in an intelligence? Are those thoughts valued?
- zvmaz 3y ago
  You can posit the existence all sorts of entities as "hypotheses that have not been disproved". See for instance Russell's teapot [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

anonzzzies 3y ago

Math people seem to have this more than other engineering/science etc ; math, and this is actual bloody Godel, seems so perfect and beautiful that is has to have a creator. Everything else is incredibly sloppy (including most software).

aragonite 3y ago
Well, Maxwell was so impressed by the perfect similarity of the hydrogen molecules he concluded that they must have been created! > No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. > None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural. > On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self existent. > Thus we have been led, along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at which Science must stop. ... Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing ... > ... But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built — the foundation stones of the material universe — remain unbroken and unworn. > They continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him Who in the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist. https://victorianweb.org/science/maxwell/molecules.html https://victorianweb.org/science/maxwell/molecules.html
- nprateem 3y ago
  They never thought of infinite multiverses with random variations in each, and survivor bias.

noncoml 3y ago

If there is afterlife and I die today will I be in the mental state I was just before I died? If so is my grandmother that had Alzheimer's destined to experience the eternity in that horrible state?

networkchad 3y ago
By my understanding the answer according to Christian belief is no. Your body is restored to its fully capability when you enter the kingdom of heaven.

erikson 3y ago

Kary Mullis the Nobel award winning inventor of PCR did too. He ends his book with this notion.

saulpw 3y ago
Kary Mullis was/is also an AIDS dissident, which kind of tarnishes his intellectual reputation.
defrost 3y ago
Also an AGW denier, believer in the supernatural, got high on his own supply of home synthesis LSD, and all round poster boy of Nobel disease.

CooCooCaCha 3y ago

A reminder that even smart people are human and can get caught up in irrationality.

javajosh 3y ago

I rather like to believe that the universe is infinite[1], and that the laws of physics change imperceptibly across long distances, meaning that our observable part has properties that helped life, and intelligent life, evolve[2]. There does seem to be a compelling negentropic "urge" present at almost every level of physical reality, that complexity accretes over time in a manner that almost seems designed[3]. This idea preserves both the notion that the universe is rational in some sense, AND that we occupy no special place in it. Indeed, one could see the biosphere of earth, and humans, as merely data pointing to a particular bundle of physical constants in this local region. I do not believe there is a heaven unless we build one. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy

mensetmanusman 3y ago
The fun thing about infinite is that it means there are an infinite number of planets with you in it typing exactly this post.
- javajosh 3y ago
  I've heard this before, of course [1]. And it may be. But it doesn't really matter because far-flung parts of the universe cannot interact with each other. Which assumes universality of some physical laws, like relativity. An assumption which cannot really be tested. Even if aliens have FTL, it will, by hypothesis, only function in their part of the universe, and so cease working in ours. In truth, I'm quite happy with the physical laws we have. It means that we are protected by a strong natural barrier. It gives us time to figure out how to become a great civilization without interference of a conqueror. Odds are against us[2], of course, but that need not stop us from giving it the old college try! 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

george-in-sd 3y ago

Article doesn't really really explain the proof of god - but a version of the proof is here https://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.4526.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.4526.pdf

Balgair 3y ago
Thanks for the link! To add to it: I guess this all hinges on what 'positive' means. Christ, I sound just like Socrates now, don't I? Glad it's Friday.

layer8 3y ago

> The idea that everything in the world has meaning is, by the way, the exact analogue of the principle that everything has a cause on which the whole of science is based.’ Gödel – just like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whom he idolised – believed that everything in the world has a reason for its being so and not otherwise. This is the core mistake, I believe, to assume that causation implies meaning, instead of causation just being a logical correlation, and meaning being a construction of the human mind. It’s interesting, though, that Gödel took his incompleteness theorems as an indication that materialism (or naturalism) can’t be the truth, while still thinking that the world is rational.

hirvi74 3y ago
> This is the core mistake, I believe, to assume that causation implies meaning, instead of causation just being a logical correlation, and meaning being a construction of the human mind. I agree with you. If anything, saying everything having a reason seem to me like applying human interpretation to Determinism.
Balgair 3y ago
I mean, such an epic proof would bias one to think that the world is rational. Spending that much time in logic-land would do that to anyone. I think that his assumption that: 'meaning' and 'causation' are the same thing, is similarly tied to his works. For someone like Godel, I'd imagine that he has no conception that they could be different.

imiric 3y ago

> His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this: > If the world is rationally organised and has meaning, then it must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of possibilities for personal development and relationships to others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it? Far from my petty mind to challenge a great thinker like Gödel, but I don't follow this line of thinking. First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it. On an atomic level matter follows specific rules, yes, and we extrapolate a certain order from this on a higher level. But I don't see how any of it can be defined as rational, or having any sort of deeper meaning. Even if we assume that to be true, why would that be a reason to believe that humans are expected to deliver some sort of "meaning" to the universe? And why would that entitle us to immortality? This all sounds deeply egotistical. > Only the human being can come into a better existence through learning, that is, give his life more meaning. I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. As we have found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life, though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all. I don't know. I'm not well read in philosophy, and my only exposure to it was during a semester at college, but this particular philosophy reads like someone trying to bring peace about mortality to their elder mother, and not like a fully fleshed out line of thinking. Which is fine. Life is indeed strange and confusing, and we should find peace in whatever way we can, but maybe there's a reason why these thoughts were never made public.

kevindamm 3y ago
> I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. As we have found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life, though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all. Instead bound by substrate and power grid that are both inefficient and minimally redundant. I'd wager more on the meat sacks.
- namaria 3y ago
  Systems that can reproduce themselves are way more likely to endure than systems that need to be held together from the outside. In 5000 years I think it's more likely that there will be people than that there will be machines.

jackbravo 3y ago

> And because the correspondence was private, he did not feel the need to hide his true views, which he might have done in more formal academic settings and among his colleagues at the IAS I don't think that being private necessarily means that it is showing his true views. In private, we often feel more relaxed and express ourselves differently than in public. But in private conversations, you can express a point of view in one conversation and a different one in another. We often tend to accommodate our audience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_accommodation_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_accommodation_th...

jarek83 3y ago

What if all our existence, it has a meaning, but it's not what we hope it is. We exist to develop as evolution becoming more complex, is also evidently more energy 'consuming', or actually to hint the following question, dispersing. What if the only reason we exist is... what if we are just a tool for... entropy?

varjag 3y ago

I wonder what Gödel would have thought of Wolfram's opinion on physics. According to that the reality is a kind of superposition of all possible combinations among all possible abstract mathematical concepts to which we have only very restricted, macroscopic insight. That makes mathematics objective and primary structure of the Universe and feeds right in the rationality canon. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-h...

deleted 3y ago
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swayvil 3y ago

Arguing for an afterlife is probably a wrong turn. Better to see it for yourself (in a way that doesn't involve dying of course.) The far reaches of meditation (dhyana, yogic self-cultivation) can provide such. But that requires a lot of work and a deviant lifestyle. Something a rare few are prepared to invest in.

ganzuul 3y ago
Bhakti is much faster.
- swayvil 3y ago
  Faster for what?

joquarky 3y ago

Anyone interested in this subject may be interested in a recently published book: "Notes on Complexity" by Neil Theise A good chunk of the book goes into details on Gödel's interests in metaphysics (including this topic). The book is generally a rational exploration of ideas that cross-cut metaphysics, spirituality, and science, and it goes into dialog and correspondence among some deep thinkers in science and philosophy in the past century or so.