While what you write is not too far from the conclusion of Gödel’s proof (he proves you can construct a statement which is equivalent to “this statement is not provable”), the point of Gödel’s theorem is that you require a minuscule amount of language (just enough to work with numbers) to do this.
English is very complicated and not a very formal language, so it’s less surprising that you can come up with unprovable statements like yours. Building such a statement in a language that can barely talk about arithmetic is not obvious at all in my opinion. People had already spent a good amount of time choosing a system of axioms that made certain paradoxes impossible to write (for example Russel’s paradox, “does the set of all sets that don’t contain themselves contain itself”, can be written in english, but not in ZFC, the most commonly used axiomatic system in math), and they thought they reached a point where they had fixed all of these paradoxical statements, but Gödel proved not only that they were wrong, but that their goal of a perfect set of axioms where everything could be proven or disproven was impossible to reach.
Also, there are unprovable statements that don’t look anything like yours, like the continuum hypothesis: “there is no infinity that is larger that the number of natural numbers, but smaller that the number of real numbers”.
This a perfectly reasonable statement, not only in english but also in ZFC, which looks like something we should be able to either prove or disprove, but in fact we can’t do either. If you want you can add it (or it’s opposite) to the axioms of ZFC, getting a new set of axioms, and you shouldn’t find any inconsistencies. After Gödel’s proof people started asking themselves “is this thing that I’m trying to prove even provable?”, which I don’t think happend very often before.
By the way, this ability to talk about arithmetic is fundamental to the proof: euclidean geometry can’t do that, so Gödel’ theorem doesn’t apply, and it turns out that it’s both consistent and complete.
honestly i don’t find Cantor’s diagonal argument that compelling either. I’ve been working on a counter argument.
In euclidean geometry, you can’t make a circle with the same area of a square… but i guess you can’t express that geometrically? I never really studied it much… but i am fond of geometric proofs.
At any rate, I’ve learned that Wittgenstein provided some great counter arguments to Gödel, so let’s just go with: i may be some heretic, but i’m with Wittgenstein on this.
I don’t expect a lot of open minds on a pro-gödel meme but, i find it annoying how many people act like it’s just soooo profound. I don’t think it is… and i think most of the people claiming Gödel have any understanding of it, and take some interpretation of an interpretation of it and bring it to woo-woo magic land….
(not you, of course, your way of arguing with me is quite refreshing and nice, i wish you were my friend).
At any rate, i wish you well. I guess, Gödel did have his place in that time, i just think people are making a mountain out of a molehill in the present time.
While what you write is not too far from the conclusion of Gödel’s proof (he proves you can construct a statement which is equivalent to “this statement is not provable”), the point of Gödel’s theorem is that you require a minuscule amount of language (just enough to work with numbers) to do this.
English is very complicated and not a very formal language, so it’s less surprising that you can come up with unprovable statements like yours. Building such a statement in a language that can barely talk about arithmetic is not obvious at all in my opinion. People had already spent a good amount of time choosing a system of axioms that made certain paradoxes impossible to write (for example Russel’s paradox, “does the set of all sets that don’t contain themselves contain itself”, can be written in english, but not in ZFC, the most commonly used axiomatic system in math), and they thought they reached a point where they had fixed all of these paradoxical statements, but Gödel proved not only that they were wrong, but that their goal of a perfect set of axioms where everything could be proven or disproven was impossible to reach.
Also, there are unprovable statements that don’t look anything like yours, like the continuum hypothesis: “there is no infinity that is larger that the number of natural numbers, but smaller that the number of real numbers”. This a perfectly reasonable statement, not only in english but also in ZFC, which looks like something we should be able to either prove or disprove, but in fact we can’t do either. If you want you can add it (or it’s opposite) to the axioms of ZFC, getting a new set of axioms, and you shouldn’t find any inconsistencies. After Gödel’s proof people started asking themselves “is this thing that I’m trying to prove even provable?”, which I don’t think happend very often before.
By the way, this ability to talk about arithmetic is fundamental to the proof: euclidean geometry can’t do that, so Gödel’ theorem doesn’t apply, and it turns out that it’s both consistent and complete.
honestly i don’t find Cantor’s diagonal argument that compelling either. I’ve been working on a counter argument.
In euclidean geometry, you can’t make a circle with the same area of a square… but i guess you can’t express that geometrically? I never really studied it much… but i am fond of geometric proofs.
At any rate, I’ve learned that Wittgenstein provided some great counter arguments to Gödel, so let’s just go with: i may be some heretic, but i’m with Wittgenstein on this.
I don’t expect a lot of open minds on a pro-gödel meme but, i find it annoying how many people act like it’s just soooo profound. I don’t think it is… and i think most of the people claiming Gödel have any understanding of it, and take some interpretation of an interpretation of it and bring it to woo-woo magic land….
(not you, of course, your way of arguing with me is quite refreshing and nice, i wish you were my friend).
At any rate, i wish you well. I guess, Gödel did have his place in that time, i just think people are making a mountain out of a molehill in the present time.