[lit-ideas] Re: There are three types of people...
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 21:37:44 -0700 (PDT)
--- John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> "The essence of Gödel's incompleteness theorem is
> that you cannot have
> both completeness and consistency. A bold
> anthropomorphic conclusion
> is that there are three types of people; those that
> must have answers
> to everything; those that panic in the face of
> inconsistencies; and
> those that plod along taking the gaps of
> incompleteness as well as the
> clashes of inconsistencies in stride if they notice
> them at all, or
> else they succumb to the tragedy of the human
> condition."
>
> Verena Huber-Dyson via http://www.edge.org/
>
> I see myself as type three. Which are you?
It goes on a bit longer:
The first kind are prone to refer to authorities;
religion, bureaucracy, governments and their own
prejudices. They postulate a Supreme Being that knows
all the answers because everything must have an
answer. With inconsistencies they deal by hopping over
them, brushing them aside, sweeping them under a rug,
ignoring them or making fun of them. These people are
unpredictable and exasperating to deal with, though
often disarmingly charming.
The second kind are the more heroic and independent
thinkers. They are not afraid of vast expanses of the
unknown; they forge ahead and rejoice over every new
question opened up by questions answered. But when up
against the walls of inconsistencies they go berserk.
These claustrophobics are in fact the scientific
minds.
And then, finally, there are the ordinary humans who
make do with both inconsistencies and gaps in their
experience of life and the world. Some of those, when
driven to the brink of endurance by roadblocks of
paradox and pitfalls of the unknown, go mad.
*On this description, I think that I would agree to
identify myself as the second type. (In intellectual
matters, in my every-day life I certainly do with a
lot of inconsistencies and gaps.)
O.K.
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