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As far as I know it's not like the proofs caused a wave of suicides, but mathematicians studying this topic often became mentally unstable, including Godel (who

As far as I know it's not like the proofs caused a wave of suicides, but mathematicians studying this topic often became mentally unstable, including Godel (who starved himself in a sanatorium) and others like Georg Cantor. I'm curious where you studied; I also took a semester course on "logic and computability" where the main text we read was 'Godel, Escher, Bach'

dvt 9y ago
I studied at UCLA and also took several logic and metalogic classes (it was my AOF). For one of the metalogic classes, this was our text: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~dam/135.07w/135notes.pdf http://www.math.ucla.edu/~dam/135.07w/135notes.pdf We briefly talked about Godel's proofs, but they are nontrivial. Henkin's proof of completeness is hard enough[1]. I don't mean to sound dismissive, but a class where Godel, Escher, Bach is the text does not seem very rigorous. Logic is very tricky stuff. And once you get into infinities, it's not even intuitive. [1] https://www.cs.nmsu.edu/historical-projects/Projects/completeness.pdf https://www.cs.nmsu.edu/historical-projects/Projects/complet...
threepipeproblm 9y ago
This article referenced some guys jumping off buildings... maybe it was more of the journalist's interpretation, connecting the sort of thing you mentioned with the suicides in a less direct way than I recall. I have wondered if it was a real news clipping (it looked like one), or some kind of old joke. To answer your question, I went to one of the so-called "elite" American colleges that still has a primarily classical/analytic philosophy program (as opposed to what is known as a "Continental" program). Would rather not say which one, but I was able to take some great logic courses through the philo department. We used Godel's work directly, and if memory serves also some Goldfarb.
Solheim 9y ago
I also took a Computability course. We used: https://www.amazon.com/Computability-Logic-George-S-Boolos/dp/0521389232 https://www.amazon.com/Computability-Logic-George-S-Boolos/d...

dvt 9y ago

I studied at UCLA and also took several logic and metalogic classes (it was my AOF). For one of the metalogic classes, this was our text: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~dam/135.07w/135notes.pdf http://www.math.ucla.edu/~dam/135.07w/135notes.pdf We briefly talked about Godel's proofs, but they are nontrivial. Henkin's proof of completeness is hard enough[1]. I don't mean to sound dismissive, but a class where Godel, Escher, Bach is the text does not seem very rigorous. Logic is very tricky stuff. And once you get into infinities, it's not even intuitive. [1] https://www.cs.nmsu.edu/historical-projects/Projects/completeness.pdf https://www.cs.nmsu.edu/historical-projects/Projects/complet...

threepipeproblm 9y ago

This article referenced some guys jumping off buildings... maybe it was more of the journalist's interpretation, connecting the sort of thing you mentioned with the suicides in a less direct way than I recall. I have wondered if it was a real news clipping (it looked like one), or some kind of old joke. To answer your question, I went to one of the so-called "elite" American colleges that still has a primarily classical/analytic philosophy program (as opposed to what is known as a "Continental" program). Would rather not say which one, but I was able to take some great logic courses through the philo department. We used Godel's work directly, and if memory serves also some Goldfarb.

Solheim 9y ago

I also took a Computability course. We used: https://www.amazon.com/Computability-Logic-George-S-Boolos/dp/0521389232 https://www.amazon.com/Computability-Logic-George-S-Boolos/d...