I’ve Googled “Godel’s loophole” and I have yet to learn what his specific criticisms of the Constitution were, and how he arrived at his conclusions - there is, like, zero literature on the subject. Not in the realm of mathematics. Not in the realm of philosophy. Not in the realm of political science. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. It seems like mostly anecdotal stuff floating around cyberspace. Without any literature, why would we take anecdotal criticism of the Constitution seriously?
Again, he might very well have commented to a friend at a dinner party that the US Constitution was flawed, but he wouldn’t have been the first to point that out. It would carry no more weight than some shoe shiner on the street saying “government sucks.” It’s an opinion, not some sort of hypothesis worth serious contemplation.
According to that random guy that is not a historian or anything, just a computer programer and fiction author with an interest, but for whom, for some reason, is in your eyes an authority on these matters, there is in fact, a document written by one of the witnesses in the room, that confirms that Godel made the claim.
He links to it in the page that you linked to, the very first link.
That is because he did not ever say what the loophole was. Why would you expect documentation about something that does not exist?
He only claimed that there was a loophole, but never revealed what it was. That is why there is so much speculation as to what it is, but no definitive answer.
some in this thread have claimed that it is article V, even though Godel never mentioned Article V.
For instance, you previously asserted that you did know what his criticisms are:
Do you have any citations for your claims that Godel was talking about article V?
I see an easier and more insidious path, and I do not know that it was the one that Godel was talking about, but it is a possible path, and one that I see no reason he wouldn’t have seen. Do you actually have any refutation about how a president could become authoritarian with a sympathetic SCOTUS and ineffectual congress?
Given the context of him being asked about his home country of austria, and how it fell into fascism, he claimed that it was a flawed constitution that allowed that to happen, and a similar flaw could befall us. In the case of that context, it seems much more likely that there is a flaw in the actual operation of the constitution, rather than the ability to change it, as the austrian constitution was not changed, just “reinterpreted” to allow a dictator to take power.
I cannot tell by the tone of that post whether that actually is a concession, or a swipe at Morgenstern’s memories. (We’re not talking about the poster here, but the scientist [if you are willing to call an economist a scientist, which I am].)
He was not a dumb guy, and he knew Godel well, and he was in discussion with him about the subject before the interview, and he was in the room with him when this happened. I see no reason to doubt the account, unless there is something else that actively refutes it.
This reminds me of one of my favourite von Neumann ‘facts’.
von Neumann was considered by all who knew him to be smarter than they were. And many who knew him were Nobel Prize winners or similarly brilliant leaders in their field.
I was stating a fact. I eye all memories with a grain of salt, to mix a metaphor, but that one is detailed and if not completely accurate - the dates are wrong according to the link - the meat of the encounter is there.
The story itself is somewhat silly. Of course a dictatorship could arise through “democratic” means if a sufficiency of the elected officials were to acquiesce. One had been in evidence in Louisiana under Huey Long not that long before, and he did it by manipulating the legislature to amend the Louisiana constitution to his benefit. (They amended the constitution to make it easy for them to amend the constitution. There are several good books about this. They’re breathtaking, if you care about democracy.) Why anyone would be scared of hearing this said out loud is baffling. Maybe it’s not the proper thing to do at a citizenship quiz but he wasn’t spilling state secrets.
Given the context of Godel (a logician) studying the constitution to prepare for his citizenship ceremony, whatever the loophole was it was most likely a theoretical logical paradox or inconsistency with the constitution itself. The issue with Article V seems like an obvious candidate, but its purely supposition, we will never know for sure.
The constitution doesn’t mention security clearances (them not really being a thing until the 1940s), so it is unlikely to be anything to with the what the OP describes.
I would say its is clearly the point of the constitution and the US form of government to ensure someone like trump could not seize control of the state. Hell, not only that the roman republic, which the enlightened classically-educated founding fathers looked to for inspiration was setup to avoid someone like Trump seizing control of the state. Never mind Godel, Trump is a the text book example of why you need checks and balances to your constitutional system, that Cicero or Plato would have recognized.
I don’t think that anyone was scared of it being said out loud, just that it was inappropriate to talk about how to take over as a fascist at a citizenship interview. And after that, they moved on to other things and didn’t really have a reason to revisit it.
OTOH, if it is something really sneaky and obscure, but obvious and easy once you see it, then that’s probably something best kept under wraps until it can be addressed.
However, I still don’t think that it is Article V, as like has been said, that’s pretty obvious that we can amend the constitution to change it to whatever we want it to be. If we, the people, want to give up our power as we the people, then there is an option for that. We can even have a constitutional convention and re-write the whole thing from scratch.
Note that there was not a change to the constitution, but a flaw in the constitution that was taken advantage of. This leads me to believe that Godel was not warning us against changing it, but warning us of what it already contained.
As I speculated up thread, it really just takes a fascist leaning president, a bare majority in the senate that enables him, and a couple open SCOTUS seats to fill with cronies of the president.
If someone in that position makes an EO that is unconstitutional, who exactly will be a check against that? If SCOTUS is sympathetic, then whatever the EO says, it can be ruled to be legal. If the senate is leaning towards the president, then nothing the house does will have any effect, and even still, they would require a veto proof majority in both houses in order to strip the president of any powers that he desires.
This would be similar to Austria’s situation, where the president could have acted to call for new elections to reinstate parliament, but chose not to, and allowed authoritarian rule.
There may also be a way for the US congress to become ineffectual enough to self-eliminate, as happened in Austria, and that would be a more apt parallel for Austria’s takeover by fascism, but the path to that doesn’t really leap out at me as much as a possibility. Not sure, what actually would happen if the speaker of the house resigned before closing the session or handing the gavel over?
I agree with you and that’s exactly what troubles me. Any American who had lived through the 30s knew exactly how close the country came to fascism or dictatorship, because of the sheer number of people who were clamoring for an end to the manifestly failed policies of democracy. The experiences of other countries would have added weight to that understanding rather than be something new and different they wouldn’t have already considered.
For there to be a story rather than a social faux pas, Godel would have needed to say something offbeat and original. There’s no evidence of that. In any event he got cut off before he provided details.
So I think we’re looking at two different things. Did Godel say something about the possibility of American fascism during his citizenship test? Very likely. Did he say something interesting and novel about the Constitution? That’s where we have no documentation. It’s the latter I dub very unlikely.
Yeah its a funny ancedote, not a warning about some secret constitutional weakness the government doesn’t want made public.
Basically its Einstein and Morgenstern explaining to Godel that the minor bureaucrat being whose job it is to hear dozens of people a day say “I swear to uphold the constitution of the united states”. has no goddamn time or inclination to hear an in-depth analysis of the theoretical logical weaknesses of the constitution by one of the worlds leading theoretical logicians.
Even if this wasn’t what Godel was thinking, the anecdote reminds us that a path to totalitarianism is not at all impossible. Even in the good ol’ USA.
In another thread I mentioned that I wasn’t too worried about Trump having the ‘nuclear codes’. But, Commander-in-Chief of the military? That frightens me, especially when added into the mix described by k9bfriender above.