Forever undecided

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• TelmoMenezes · Aug 31, 2015 · Recommends

  …emulated by a Turing machine), then you might want to take a look at Gödel, Escher, Bach, where Hofstadter discusses how the second incompleteness theorem applies to Turing machines. You might also enjoy "Forever Undecided" by Smullyan. It uses puzzles to guide you to an intuition about what the incompleteness theorems means to human knowledge and its limitations. In the worst case it's a fun read. Peace!

  on “The End of Rationalism: An Interview with John Ralston Saul (2001)” ↗
• pjungwir · Jul 4, 2020 · Recommends

  …way to get a lot in one place. The Night is Large is also great but less math-focused. I don't see any recommendations for Smullyan yet. The Lady or the Tiger is the classic I think, but I really loved Forever Undecided.

  on “Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?” ↗
• Bakkot · Jul 8, 2014 · Recommends

  …answer for you, but to do so you need to develop some kind of self-reference. (Like Godel!) If you like thinking about this sort of thing, Raymond Smullyan has a lot of great writing - I'd recommend eg Forever Undecided or To Mock a Mockingbird for a more informal treatment, or First-Order Logic for a formal one.

  on “A Billionaire Mathematician’s Life of Ferocious Curiosity” ↗
• pjungwir · Dec 2, 2014 · Recommends

  …really aimed at a general reader. Agree or not, it's a pretty fascinating argument, one which makes my head spin. Some other nice resources on Godel are: - Gödel's Proof by Nagel and Newman - Forever Undecided by Smullyan

  on “Ask HN: Does anyone doubt artificial consciousness is possible?” ↗
• pjungwir · May 25, 2015 · Recommends

  …way to get a lay understanding---and scare you enough about how many pitfalls there are. When you finish read this loving criticism also: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2013/07/22/applied-practical-cryp... Forever Undecided by Raymond Smullyan. Fun "puzzle guide to Gödel". Out of print but Amazon has used copies. Quantum Computing since Democritus by Scott Aaronson. Fun survey but requires some familiarity with P/NP, quantum…

  on “Ask HN: Good business or technology book recommendations?” ↗
• pjungwir · Feb 12, 2017 · Recommends

  My favorite Smullyan book is out of print: Forever Undecided: A Puzzle Guide to Gödel. Gödel's paradoxical theory hooked me in college, and after twenty years I still can't help but feel that it has a message for us---not in the word-play associations that some…

  on “Raymond Smullyan has died” ↗
• abrax3141 · Sep 14, 2022 · Recommends

  Smullyan's "Forever Undecided", and Ernest Nagel's "Gödel's Proof" are the best explanations available, to my mind. I find GEB to be bloated, if all that one is interested in is Gödel. (There is much more to recommend GEB, but if…

  on “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an in-depth explainer” ↗