Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27

En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:

> On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 22:59, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> > Which is actually a corollary of the Christophe Grandsire Law of
> Existence: if
> > you can imagine something, it exists, has existed or will exist
> somewhere in
> > the multiverse ;))) .
>
Oops! Forgot one word in that: "probably" ;))) . Let's say I like to be
careful ;)) .

> How about the set of all sets that don't belong to themself?* Does that
> exist
> somewhere in the multiverse?
Why not? It's impossible only when you discuss about it using our limited human-
invented two-value logic. Why should the universe follow what is mainly a human
convention?

 If so, how?
>
How should I know? This law discusses only the existence of things, not the
manner of their existence.

And anyway, there's also another corollary from this law: seen that we human
beings are essentially limited in our way of perceiving and conceiving the
universe, it is probable that there exist things in the multiverse that we can
neither explain nor even conceive.

I always find that humans must have quite a lot of guts to dare pretend that,
limited as they are, they can explain the whole universe. And that's a very
scientific opinion :)) .

> * This is an impossible set. If it doesn't belong to itself, then
> it satisfies the condition and belongs to itself, which means it doesn't
> satisfy
> the condition, and so it doesn't belong to itself, and we're back to the
> initial
> one again.
Only one of the many possible paradoxes that our two-value logic provokes. IMHO
a mark of its weakness and of the uselessness of trying to apply it too
strongly to our environment.

 Apparently the guy who came up with this set, whose name
> I've
> forgotten, went off to write a _Principia Mathematica_ and took a lot of
> pages
> to prove that 1+1=2, which only makes me *want* to be the first person
> one of
> my Maths Lecturers has ever met whose attempted to read the thing.
> Unfortunately,
> I doubt I'd understand most of it...
>
LOL. According to a quick Google, the authors of the Principia Mathematica were
Bertrand Russel and Alfred North Whitehead, and the proof that 1+1=2 appears
only at the 362nd page of the book!
(http://www.cut-the-knot.com/selfreference/russell.shtml)

> Tristan (has come to the conclusion that mathematicians *must* have too
> much
> time on their hands to come up with things like that... And then to
> prove that
> 1+1=2...)
>
Well, it was not that obvious ;))) (and it's not even always true ;))) ).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.

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