Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by My_Name 8 days ago
"the sentence...is true but unprovable"

Personally, I would say that if it cannot be shown to be true or false, it cannot be said to be true (or false).

Asking that about that sentence is, to my mind, a category error, like asking what sound yellow makes.

I'm reminded of the episode of Star Trek (TOS) where they make a bunch of robots explode by saying "This sentence is false". Any reasonably written software deals with exceptions very easily.

1 comments

What you think "personally" isn't relevant. Turing proved that there are statements that are true in a consistent axiomatic system (of sufficient power for arithmetic) that cannot be proven within that axiomatic system.

That episode of TOS is a silly show and is completely irrelevant.