X-Message-Number: 23867 Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 00:55:04 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Goedel Undecidability Robert Ettinger, #23848, writes: >Furthermore, Goedel's conclusion was a mere language trick and of no >mathematical significance. He only showed that it is possible to label certain Goedel's result of showing that undecidable propositions exist is closely related to the unsolvability of the Halting Problem for Turing machines, which is equivalent to saying you can't write a computer program that will decide, beforehand, yes or no, whether a given computer program will ever stop running or not. That result does not seem like a mere language trick. It does have practical (as well as mathematical) significance. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23867