You said this earlier, and it still makes no sense.
The paradox is that if something is not on the list, then it is a fetish, and therefore must be written on the list. But if it is written on the list, then it is not a fetish, and therefore must be erased from the list.
This is an obvious reference to Russell’s paradox.
There is absolutely no reason to consider a specific list for Goedel.
As for the bolded part: why wouldn’t it be a fetish? Sure, it wouldn’t be Goedel’s fetish, but it might still be someone else’s fetish.
Yes, there is; the reason given immediately above. If there is not a specific list for Goedel, then one can avoid paradox as follows: put everything on the list (with someone other than Goedel having them all as fetishes). Now, all Goedel is saying is “I have no fetishes”. That’s fine; that doesn’t mean we have to start removing things from the list. Even though Goedel doesn’t share Person B’s foot fetish, say, it is still, nonetheless, a fetish and still belongs on the list.
It is now clear to me that it is not; it doesn’t match up with it at all, nor does it make sense in terms of the history of the situation (Russell’s paradox was not a response to Russell and Whitehead; R + W’s system was impervious to Russell’s paradox). Russell’s paradox concerns the set of all sets which do not contain themselves. It makes no sense to speak correspondingly of “the fetish of all fetishes which do not contain themselves”; fetishes do not contain other fetishes, or any such thing. However, Goedel’s result does essentially work via consideration of the collection of sentences which aren’t in the collection of sentences provable in system X. This would translate to the list of all fetishes not on the list of fetishes drawn up by person X, which is precisely the situation in the comic.
Rewording that last part slightly:
However, Goedel’s result does essentially work via consideration of a predicate true of precisely those sentences which don’t satisfy the predicate of provability in system X. This would translate to a man whose fetishes were precisely those not on the list of fetishes drawn up by person X, which is precisely the situation in the comic.
And it might not.
And since Goedel says that anything not on the list is his fetish, we can be sure that there is something that is a fetish for him alone.
That is, unless we ourselves create another character, nonexistent in the comic, to whom everything is a fetish.
However, if we take it upon ourselves to invent extraordinary new characters, we can hardly use them to criticize the original comic. What you are doing is essentially writing a fanfiction for the comic and using it to explain the original.
No, it clearly is a reference to Russell’s paradox.
This is made even more clear by the fact that it says “they eventually solved this self-reference.”
Russell discovered the self-reference based paradox (as in the comic), and then was able to avoid it (as in the comic).
Thus it matches up with the fact that R + W’s system avoided the paradox.
If it didn’t have this alt-text, then I would agree that it was misleading. As it is, it is very straightforward.
So, R + W were able to resolve Goedel’s “self reference”-based paradox in creating their system?
Amazing.
No, but the alt-text is just silly fluff. How do you account for Goedel’s presence in the strip, given that he has nothing to do with Russell’s paradox?
Bad writing.
The author is probably aware that it would make more sense to have Goedel raise a problem stemming from his incompleteness theorem, but was unable to think of a way to write the comic that way.
In order to do so, he would need to think of a way to make the list a formal system, and come up with a fetish that represents a statement about fetishes.
As such, the comic is a failure on that level.
However, the comic works on an immediate level (there is some humor in Goedel’s fetish and the problem it causes), and it satisfies some of the audience by having references to famous logicians and a famous paradox. It even correctly references Goedel as destroying R+W’s ultimate goal. I think it is still a good comic.
And Russell’s paradox doesn’t need a way to talk about fetishes being members of other fetishes?
Thinking of a theory X as a mapping from sentences to truth values, Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorem concerns a sentence G whose truth value happens to be definitionally equivalent to ~X(G). Because logical complement, as an operator on truth values, has no fixed point, it cannot be the case that X assigns the correct truth value to G.
Thinking of an indexed fetish-list X as a mapping from people to fetish predicates, the comic concerns a person G whose fetish predicate happens to be definitionally equivalent to ~X(G). Because logical complement, as an operator on fetish predicates, has no fixed point, it cannot be the case that X assigns the correct fetish predicate to G.
This seems to me to be a much stronger similarity than any that can be made between the situation in the comic and “the set of all sets which do not contain themselves”. Goedel doesn’t say “Any fetish which doesn’t contain itself”. He says “Any fetish which is not on your list”, i.e., “The opposite of whatever X says about me”, a la “X doesn’t prove me”.
I don’t buy it. “Anything not on your list” does not work as the self referential statement you are trying to see it as.
Even worse, you now fall prey to the complaints you had earlier.
Because in fact, X can prove him. It is perfectly capable, it just needs someone else to come along with the same fetishes.
This is not a situation involving Goedel’s incompleteness theorem.
By your interpretation, we would need the list to be a list of only Goedel’s fetishes, but there is no indication that is the case.
I think it is more likely that the author just could not think of a fetish to adequately represent a “Goedel sentence,” and thus used a fetish that more obviously makes one think of Russell’s paradox.
If it is written on the fetish list, then it is not a fetish.
If it is not written on the fetish list, then it is a fetish.
If the soaswdnct is in itself, then it is not in itself.
If the soaswdnct is not in itself, then it is in itself.
Not a perfect match, but the incompleteness theorem explanation does not make sense, especially since in that setting the “statement” CAN be “proved.” This should eliminate that interpretation immediately.
That is not what the list is.
It is just a list of fetishes, it does not mention anything about specific people with the fetishes.
If you want to make an analogy, the sentences will need to correspond to fetishes, not to people.
Offhand I can’t think of a fetish that would work as a “Goedel sentence,” but the one in the comic doesn’t work.
For what it’s worth, I always though that the comic was a reference to GIT. It’s not something that’s going to withstand a mathematician’s scrutiny; rather, it’s just a joke that’s meant to be vaguely reminiscent of the theorem and its history.
If the soaswdnct is claimed true by X, then it is not true.
If the soaswdnct is not claimed true by X, then it is true.
Just as capable of making one think of GIT, see? With an even tighter resemblance at that.
As for the “There is a separate list of each person’s fetishes part”, another perhaps more reasonable way to think of the same thing is “The single list of everyone’s fetishes also keeps track of information about which people have which fetishes”. I basically agree with ultrafilter that the comic was not designed in such a way as to withstand actual scrutiny, and was just meant to draw humor from vague reminiscence; however, supposing this detail, which is not terribly unreasonable or implausible, is how I was finally able to make sense of the comic nonetheless. Even if not what the author intended, it is what he should’ve intended; a fanwank, basically.
There’s something to be said about jokes that have to be explained. Although it might be funny in spirit, the actual vehicle of funny broke down long ago.
Yeah…I think I’m with you. Their jokes are either super funny or very meh to me. I loved the Ghostbusters one, the ball pit of sex one, the google maps one, to name a few, but often they’re just one big whoosh.
That’s the thing. They’re usually pretty clever, but the writer(s) have hn ax to grind, and they do. Sometimes to their detriment.
An ax to grind? Are we reading the same comic? Yeah, sometimes the humor relies on your knowing a lot of computer science and thinking like an engineer, but if you do, the jokes make sense even if they’re not always funny.
“Making sense” versus “being funny” isn’t the dichotomy I want in any kind of comic. It should focus more on the funny and less on making sense.
With that being said, I like XKCD, but not as much as some of you guys.
Completely ridiculous.
Randall Munroe is one of the most empathetic and emotionally understanding people on the internets. His furry comic, by itself, is proof enough of that. I’d have his babies if I had a spare womb in which to gestate them.
This, on the other hand, is spot on. If funny has to be explained, then it’s no longer funny, having been magically transformed into merely “clever”.
But although it understandably interferes with your enjoyment, his esoteric humor does not represent a flaw in the comic. The chief reason why Munroe is so successful is that in many of his posts he deliberately narrows his target audience to a specific group of technically knowledgeable people. This comes with the expense of whooshing the general public, but its great benefit is that he is able to connect quite forcefully with Those Who Understand. The dude is a pioneer, blazing new trails in comedy. He boldly jokes where no one has joked before, and Those Who Understand* love him for it. The fact that he must inevitably leave some people behind is unfortunate, but it’s ultimately not his problem.
As for the Gödel comic, I knew just enough about the topic to find it humorous, but also little enough that I didn’t have to worry about my heavy burden of knowledge interfering with the funny. I was, in other words, the target audience. Thumbs up from me.
I don’t get this one: xkcd: Improvised
I can’t find any Harrison Ford movie with those initials as signifying the title.
I feel like a dolt.
Empire Strikes Back