FOM: Chaitin and mathematical practice

[Richard Heck]

>PPS. I believe that Boolos once gave a talk where he claimed that Chaitin's
>incompleteness result was a riff on the Berry paradox (i.e., "the least
>integer that cannot be named in fewer than thirteen words") in the same
>way that Goedel's incompleteness result is a riff on Russell's paradox.
>  Does this sound familiar?  Was it ever published?

See "A New Proof of the Goedel Incompleteness Theorem", in Logic, Logic, 
and Logic, pp. 383-8, at p.386. Boolos attributes the comparison to Chaitin 
himself in "Computational Complexity and Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem", 
AMS Notices17 (1970), p.672.

Richard


----------------------------------------------------------
Richard Heck
Professor of Philosophy
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