X-Message-Number: 4232
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 22:23:00 -0700
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Perfect people and Godel.

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In Message #4224   (Thomas Donaldson) Wrote:

	       >It is exactly because we human beings do NOT operate formally
	       >on axioms that we can succeed in surviving in the world.              
	       >We have one kind of device  which does that: neural nets. 
	       
Neural nets are a technology for speeding up certain types of
problems, but any problem that can be solved by a neural net can
be solved by a Turing machine; mathematically and philosophically 
the two are equivalent.

		>And so Goedel tells us a good deal by demolishing one
		>particular idea about how we think.
		
Godel (not Goedel) tells us that a machine can never know
everything and will always make mistakes. I  know that human
beings are omniscient and never make mistakes thus I conclude
that humans can not be machines. However I might be mistaken about that, 
after all, I'm only human.

	       >And so Goedel's Theorem will be forgotten. That is, of course,
	       >the general fate of negative results.
	       
Like the impossibility of squaring the circle OR trisecting an angle 
OR the conservation of mass energy OR the second law of thermodynamics 
OR the speed of light OR finding the last digit of pie OR ...
		  

				  John K Clark              

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