When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought - Jim Holt

[@alanrobertsrenders]

Jim Holt is amazing and brilliant... and very funny!

[@Kobe29261]

What really smart people prove, is how few of us are really necessary for most of what has become. You could fit the biggest contributors to the advancement of human understanding starting from some notable Greeks and on from there in a classroom!

[@schmetterling4477]

Yeah, that's something people think who have never been in a science library.

[@michaellangan4450]

The Great Man Theory I asked my professor if he could balance an egg;he tried but couldn't. I took an egg and cracked one end and it balanced because of where it cracked. What am I explaining? the prof. didn't believe in the GMT . He thought if one man didn't think it another would have. They all had the chance to crack the egg but only the GM did it.

[@schmetterling4477]

@@michaellangan4450 Dude, you are not Christopher Columbus. You are just a lonely kid on the internet who is desperate for attention. :-)

[@bobaldo2339]

I enjoyed this very much.

[@alhassani626]

Oppression is the source of Genius.

[@blairribeca5858]

Really?

[@dosomething3]

Interesting lecture.

[@InfiniteCyclus]

If you point a laser at a mirror, it's almost as if the beam acts as if there's no mirror. It just goes straight on. The beam is reflected by the mirror at the same angle it approaches it. For a mirror to flip the image it would have to reflect the beam at another angle it comes in with.

[@shacktoms]

A mirror actually reverses front to back, leaving left-right and top-bottom alone. I think it is only non-obvious because of the way the question is usually framed. But if you stand in front of a mirror, the image you see is as though everything had been reversed front to back.

[@peterdegraaff3479]

Can one safely say that Jim Holt has Gödel number 3? (video 13:53-14:03, Gödel number here defined loosely analogous to the Erdös number, which Jim Holt probably does not have).

[@MrStosh12345]

Tough crowd, and a good lecture. I didn't find it boring at all, give yourself some. credit when credits due. All the nuts were geniuses after all. Well pour me an absinth and fire up my bunsen burner, this delusion freak is going to turn lead into gold. Stay Newtonian my futurists friends and foes.

[@tolyamochin4066]

Глядя на слушателей, у меня сложилось впечатление, что они пришли не на лекцию, чтобы послушать умного человека. А они всей толпой вломились в забегаловку, чтобы побыстрому на ход ноги опрокинуть по стакану борматухи и помчаться дальше. Вобщем никакого уважения к лектору.

[@comeau187]

Surprised you didn’t mention Ramanujen. I wish there were more lectures on the history of great mathematicians and physicists.

[@ezioberolo2936]

Erroneously he claims that the concept of the infinitesimally small was thought of in the nineteenth century, ignoring Newton's concepts in developing differential and integral calculus: viz. in the limit that delta x goes to zero. Newton lived in the 17th century, where there were already some rigorous approaches to mathematics and algebra....

[@mohamedsoussou6187]

Read the book :) he talked long about Newton use of infinitesimal and differential calculus in the chapter dedicated to that

[@ConnoisseurOfExistence]

Yes, you do need to have odd personality to be a genius. Aristotle said it: "No great mind has ever existed without the touch of madness".

[@atol71]

So we all know X^+2 type of equation on X-Y matrix approaches 0 or infinity never reaching it.... Can it reach PLANK LENGTH?

[@machinistnick2859]

Thanks a lot😀

[@hosseinabolghasem938]

Alexander Grothendieck died in 2014 and not 1914!

[@athertonken]

Excellent. However there is a shortcut to allowing dictatorship in the US, simply lawmakers interpreting the Constitution in any way they feel like. Unfortunately we now see this happening more and more by lawmakers and the judges ( whose qualifications now are more what party they support than legal experience). in their politics and their politically motivated judges.

[@atol71]

What he could do with one stone and Alexander the great's chess & rice puzzle: If one magic bean that flies can make 8 and the Chessboard?

[@aperez10]

Super interesting.

[@stephencarter7266]

The guy who took issue with Holt's casual statement that "death is bad", obviously wandered into the wrong room. There's always 'that guy' lurking about, waiting to pounce on an issue misunderstood out of context.

[@zagyex]

Death of our loved ones is bad. So death is bad.

[@ctoast279]

It was RECESS APPOINTMENTS that troubled Gödel with respect to the constitution.

[@BuleriaChk]

Godel's "Theorem" Godel's "Theorem" is a complete farce and absolutely trivial. Godel assigns a unique number to all the symbols in real numbers via the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra: e.g., the syntactical symbols "+", "-", "x" (multiplication) as well as the actual numbers and powers (e.g. 3^2). By his criteria, a "proof" consists of a tautology on each side of the equal sign. At first, one might think the statement "3 + 4 = 7" is a "proof", since it can be reduced to a sum of units on either side. But that would be a contradiction, according to Godel, because "3 + 4" has a different Godel Number than "7". So the only "proofs" for Godel are G(wff) = G(wff); any other statement is a contradiction by Godel Number. NOte that this characterization is not restricted to Wwff's: the equality is also true for gibberish n the metalanguage. By that criterion, all systems comprised of symbols (wffs or not) can be proved as true or false, but not both. Even gibberish is true, provided their Godel numbers match. And who decides that the Godel Numbers are equal? I do, since you are probably a figment of my imagination... :) TRUST me :) I call it a giant twittering machine built on nothing, see my pdfs on physicsdiscussionforum dot org Remember, you read it here first... :)

[@carloscolon9968]

He did not talked much about Godel as a logician !!! his 1931 thesis on undecibility etc.

[@Yahweh-e2l]

36:50

[@michaelaristidou2605]

Several mistakes from the speaker, and a bit propagandistic talk too. "Aristotle the 2nd greatest logician"?

[@atol71]

What he could do with one stone and liar paradox: If yes yes is no no and no no is yes yes then is no yes logically no no? Is then yes no logically yes yes? yes no no yes?

[@FieldDebby-o5h]

Lee Michelle Johnson Dorothy Walker Edward

[@gk-qf9hv]

Gødel was right! In what way Trump is NOT a dictator?

[@capaxver]

The hydrogen bomb has done no one any good, Mr. Holt? How is it that you come to that conclusion?

[@viewer3091]

If death was bad then Complainers would come back to Complain ! !

[@ramiroofaragon9323]

I'm a more forgiving KZbin viewer than most, but Holt comes across as insufferably condescending here... 🙄🙄🙄

[@garad123456]

at what point? I didnt pick up on any of that

[@bobaldo2339]

I would say quite the opposite. He seemed very tolerant and down to earth.

[@2msvalkyrie529]

It's because Physicists think they are the new Rock Stars . ? ( amongst Dweebs they are , of course .)

[@alhassani626]

It's pronounced Gough-del. There is no r.

[@cyborgelisogaywhonowhasbra6003]

O with an umlaut is pronounced with an r-ish sound.

[@god5535]

Accent fail..

[@bobaldo2339]

Nope. The correct pronunciation does sound like what once was a pretty standard female undergarment.

[@MrTerribleLie]

Stop saying " Gurdle ". There's no "r" there.

[@MrTerribleLie]

@Universalis Ted Oh, densk du? Welche Land sagst ö/oe mit eneim "r". Ich warte auf deine Antwort... Viel Glück!

[@2msvalkyrie529]

In welche land sagt man : densk du. ? ! ?

[@robluciani2374]

Excellent. Thought provoking.

[@schmetterling4477]

Also completely wrong.

[@capaxver]

Fr. Georges Lamaître was a pretty stable genius - does anyone here have an idea about what might have afforded him his sanguinity.. ?

[@thorcook]

his worldview/faith?

[@2msvalkyrie529]

Anyone who is sanguine hasn't really grasped the full awfulness of their situation. Ignorance is bliss ....

[@sepgorut2492]

5:05 "I'm speaking a bit shlockily here" I'm not American. What does _shlockily_ mean?

[@jps0117]

= sloppily

[@bobaldo2339]

I assume that is slang inspired by Yiddish. If you are familiar with "shlock", then "shockily" becomes an obvious sort of play on the word.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Distributed locality? Equals temporal projection of now-connection to impose upon infinite history. (In a literary-linguistic style of creativity) Death is death, bad is bad.

[@globaldigitaldirectsubsidi4493]

"The economic anarchy of capitalism is the root of all evil." - Albert Einstein

[@sucim]

Fake Quote? Any references?

[@bobaldo2339]

He is the most misquoted man in the world of the internet. You name it, and it has been attributed to Einstein somewhere in cyber space. Therefore, it is impossible to take anyone's "Einstein quote" at face value.

[@chanchan6507]

Capitalism is not perfect, it is politically chosen to constrain the destructing forces of passions. From the Passions and Interest by Albert Hirschman, who also worked later at IAS of Princeton.

[@2msvalkyrie529]

Sounds dubious ? What prevented him from emigrating to the Soviet Union if he was so unhappy ?