It's only in Math that logic is enough. [LWN.net]

It's only in Math that logic is enough.

Posted Apr 11, 2013 11:59 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: The VP8 wars heat up ... again by marcH
Parent article: The VP8 wars heat up ... again

It's not enough even there!

As soon as you start doing arithmetic you have to start acting on faith.

Godel has shown that, as I like to put it, "you can have complete, consistent, or adds up. Pick any two". You have to take it on faith that arithmetic works, because Godel has shown it's unprovable.

Cheers,
Wol

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It's only in Math that logic is enough.

Posted Apr 11, 2013 16:17 UTC (Thu) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]

> Godel has shown that, as I like to put it, "you can have complete, consistent, or adds up. Pick any two". You have to take it on faith that arithmetic works, because Godel has shown it's unprovable.

Well, given those choices you'd always pick "consistent and adds up". But Gödel went one further and said that you can prove consistency if and only if your system is inconsistent.

So you don't even get to choose.