Comments on: Brilliant Ideas

By: dileepkumar

dileepkumar — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:18:58 +0000

even good or bad r u do it

By: dileepkumar

dileepkumar — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:17:20 +0000

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By: S

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:31:17 +0000

“God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it” – AndrÃ© Weil (commenting on Kurt GÃ¶del’s work)

By: Sucharit Sarkar

Sucharit Sarkar — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:23:42 +0000

I always found the idea of mathematics itself to be superb. The fact there could be a small set of axioms, and a small set of rules, and lo behold, you have the whole of mathematics. I guess this includes the idea of proof, which in itself is another awesome idea. The simplicity with which you can convince another person of truth.

@anshul Here is an incomplete proof of Godel’s incompleteness theorem. Take a well constructed square matrix, and look at the diagonal. (This is the rightly famous and aptly named Cantor’s diagonal slash, used earlier by Cantor and later by Turing).

By: anshul

anshul — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 23:46:45 +0000

The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

I recently tried to explain Godel incompleteness to a bio geek and what I realized was that it’s nearly impossible to lay-man-ize Godel. Even the great wiki fails on this one…