Cat's Squirrel
Gold Meritorious Patron
Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973
I don't see any inconsistency between that and what I said. I'm happy to stand corrected if there is.
I hate to give any succour to Scientologists here, but there is a difference between mathematics and almost any other endeavour that I'm aware of (including philosophy) in that mathematicians have complete freedom to define both the form and the content of their axioms, and once they've done so, those axioms become givens. Philosophers don't; they regard (and have to) everything as fair game for investigation, and the same would be even more true (or just as true) of a spiritual system where you are dealing with our nature as spiritual beings.
Scientology sucked, as far as it did, not because Godel proved that any system of axioms had to result in undecidables but because LRH's map of the terrain was very inaccurate.
(OK, and a host of other reasons as well; it was designed to control people, as I'm still discovering).
I'm referring to Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, CS.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic. The theorems, proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of mathematics. The two results are widely, but not universally, interpreted as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible, giving a negative answer to Hilbert's second problem.
The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (e.g., a computer program, but it could be any sort of algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers (arithmetic). For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems
I spent months understanding it, because another ex said it was Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem that got him out of Scn. From this, the ex concluded that Scientology could not be a basic truth and left. Understanding Goedel's logic (but not his math - that was over my head) was the most difficult brain task I've undertaken in years but it was worth it. I won't delve further into it, though, except to mention that there is much more to this than you think.
I don't see any inconsistency between that and what I said. I'm happy to stand corrected if there is.
I hate to give any succour to Scientologists here, but there is a difference between mathematics and almost any other endeavour that I'm aware of (including philosophy) in that mathematicians have complete freedom to define both the form and the content of their axioms, and once they've done so, those axioms become givens. Philosophers don't; they regard (and have to) everything as fair game for investigation, and the same would be even more true (or just as true) of a spiritual system where you are dealing with our nature as spiritual beings.
Scientology sucked, as far as it did, not because Godel proved that any system of axioms had to result in undecidables but because LRH's map of the terrain was very inaccurate.
(OK, and a host of other reasons as well; it was designed to control people, as I'm still discovering).
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lol

