I’ve always read the Gödel citizenship anecdote less as “this topic is dangerous” and more as “formal systems have edge cases, please don’t bring them up at awkward social moments.”
That mostly works, until it doesn’t. Which is true of basically everything humans make up, including citizenship hearings. But wouldn’t life be so boring if we couldn’t gamble?
— Einstein to Gödel in 1947, probably
I’ve always read the Gödel citizenship anecdote less as “this topic is dangerous” and more as “formal systems have edge cases, please don’t bring them up at awkward social moments.”
That mostly works, until it doesn’t. Which is true of basically everything humans make up, including citizenship hearings. But wouldn’t life be so boring if we couldn’t gamble?