• xylogx@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Godel showed that self-referential problems like this are impossible to resolve. He proved that the existence of these types of problems mean that math can never completely describe reality as outlined in his incompleteness theorems -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel’s_incompleteness_theorems

    This is one of the drivers of post-modernist thinking. Douglas Hofstadter talks a lot about this and the nature of consciousness in his famous book Gödel, Escher, Bach -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%2C_Escher%2C_Bach

    • iltg@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      as far as i understand, godel’s incompleteness doesn’t touch reality or ability for math to describe reality. math is very vast and we only need a fraction of it to describe reality right now. whether this description is correct is debatable but not part of godel’s proof, which to me only means math can’t be “summarized” into a set of “universal” rules. i may be wrong tho, godel’s work is a lot to take in

      • xylogx@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Yes, I described it badly and that description is inaccurate. It is technically about completeness which has a very specific definition. The implication that no formal logic system could describe even itself fully and that was a major blow to modernist “clock-maker’s universe” view of the reality.