Posted on 08/04/2005 10:18:33 PM PDT by snarks_when_bored
GÖDEL AND THE NATURE OF MATHEMATICAL TRUTH [6.8.05] - A Talk with Rebecca Goldstein
Ping
It's too long to slog through this late at night, but since the picture of Einstein and Goedel was included, I thought I'd pass on a wonderful Einstein/Goedel anecdote which is particularly a propos on FR.
It seems that Goedel was so socially inept (in the way mathematicians often are--lost in thought when other folks would be attending to present company, given to assuming that everyone cares about their work, and the like) that Einstein took it on himself to 'look after him' (rather remarkable since theoretical physicists tend to be the same way).
One day during the 1952 presidential campaign, Einstein (who like all 'good' intellectuals was a socialist, and backing Stevenson) came storming into the tea room at the IAS shouting "Goedel's gone completely crazy! He's voting for Eisenhower!"
(I want to retouch a photo of Goedel to add an "I like Ike" button and put it up in my department, since Ike hailed from the part of Kansas that K-State draws most of its students from.)
Another story I like about him involves his becoming a U.S. citizen. As one might expect, he wanted to do well on his citizenship test, so he spent some time studying the Constitution carefully. As a result of his study, he concluded that the Constitution could, under certain extraordinary circumstances, lead to the establishment of a tyranny in place of representative democracy. He told a few people about his discovery, and so, when the time came for Gödel to go before a judge and be sworn in as a citizen, Einstein was given the job of distracting him and so preventing him from talking about his discovery. As luck would have it, the friendly judge made a remark about Gödel having come from Austria and how awful the Nazi regime was there and how nothing like that could ever happen in America. Well, it was the opening Gödel was waiting for; he immediately said to the judge something like, "On the contrary, the Constitution does permit the formation of a tyrannical government in the U.S....", and he was about to launch into an explanation of how it could happen when the judge gently cut him off and proceeded to make him a U.S. citizen.
It would be quite interesting to know just what the tyranny loophole was—Gödel was the greatest logician since Aristotle and if he said that he'd found a way to deduce the possibility of tyranny from the Constitution, it's not at all unlikely that he was correct.
It would be quite interesting to know just what the tyranny loophole was—Gödel was the greatest logician since Aristotle and if he said that he'd found a way to deduce the possibility of tyranny from the Constitution, it's not at all unlikely that he was correct.
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I've heard that french bloggers looking into the EU constitution found that there weren't any strong boundaries between the various branches of the proposed EU government.
It is the boundaries between the branches of government that keep tyrany at bay.
So if there were weak boundaries between the branches of the EU government the probability of one branch expropriating the powers of the others is that much greater.
My guess would be that godel found a way that one branch of the US government could bleed off powers from the others.
My guess would be that godel found a way that one branch of the US government could bleed off powers from the others.
That's a quite reasonable guess. As the power gradually concentrates in one branch, the possibility of tyranny grows.
Gödel was a compulsive note-writer. It would be wonderful for someone to find in his Nachlass some notes on this question. But it's likely that if he'd left anything, it would already have been found. Too bad...
Whoa, now I really feel stupid. An this was the beginner's version.
Such a way does exist, and the Dems are actively pursuing it -- namely, making courts, esp. the SC, the final arbitrator of all decisions, not just legislation, but ALL executive decisions, most probably via ACLU lawsuits questioning their 'Constitutionality', where the term 'Constitutionality' becomes entirely subjective and the tool of crass political manipulation.
There are at least two other routes to tyranny, both perfectly Constitutional as far as I know:
1) With sufficient popular support in a time of extreme crisis, a President could declare a state of national emergency and begin to rule by decree. If left unchecked, such a situation could acquire momentum, culminating in the President suspending indefinitely any and all future elections and ruling entirely by decree. This would require an extreme crisis and an appallingly servile population, but is it conceivable.
2) Through successive Constitutional Amendments, duly passed by 3/4 of the state legislatures, the Constitution could be entirely re-written and gutted so as to make any but the powers of the Executive impotent. The Executive powers would, of course, be greatly augmented, while the term of the sitting President could be extended, or simply rubber-stamped by a puppet legislature every four years.
Anyway, I admit the article was too long (and technical) to slough through for myself also. I learned SOME of this stuff in graduate school (philosophy, never matriculated), and I did read GEB and actually understood most of it, so I have a pretty strong but dormant interest in epistomology and the foundations of logic. Classify me as an intuitionist I guess. Plato (speaking through Socrates) claimed that all knowledge was remberance. Kant claimed mathematics and logic were inherent modes of thinking. To me it's like knowing that you know something, then asking yourself 'But how do I know that?' So to me formal proof is nice when you can get it, but I can get along just swell with my run-of-the-mill common sense. Maybe that's one reason I became indifferent to my graduate studies. I'm a musician and the B in GEB is what really grabbed me.
LOL. Leave it to a computer/math nerd to be disturbed at the notion that Truth trumps any human-devised system of proving it. In my own small opinion, only one lacking a strong believe in some kind of universal transcence (what Westerners usually call 'God') would be so overly concerned about fixing absolutely and for all time the foundations of knowledge in a formal mathematical sense. I say 'If you are starting to drown, don't reach for a life-saver, just learn to tread water. Life-savers are notoriously prone to leaks!
I'm tempted to try to find Huber-Dyson's review of GEB. Might be fun to read (since she's not a fan).
"Einstein (who like all 'good' intellectuals was a socialist"
I've heard it said that he was "a moral idiot."
"an "I like Ike" button"
I used to have some of those. Ah, the sunny slopes of long ago...
Apparently Gödel starved himself to death. This interests me as there are people with eating disorders in my family (both female and male), and I don't believe that the true origin of these illnesses has been discovered. There clearly is some connection with obsessive personality.
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You mean, besides just passing an amendment instituting a dictatorship?
It would be quite interesting to know just what the tyranny loophole was—Gödel was the greatest logician since Aristotle and if he said that he'd found a way to deduce the possibility of tyranny from the Constitution, it's not at all unlikely that he was correct.You mean, besides just passing an amendment instituting a dictatorship?
I get the impression that there was more to it than that, but, hey, maybe not...
Thanks for the ping!
mark
The Treaty clause? As I recall, the Constitution subordinates itself to all Treaties ratified under its auspices. If a Treaty establishing a tyranny were ratified, it would trump the Constitution.
But that's a guess....
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