Honestly, anyone whose precision of knowledge is limited only by Godel's incompleteness theorem deserves to be a little bit arrogant. But no such person exists. Looking back on one's life tends to reveal many errors, blunders, and utterly moronic misconceptions. Plenty of material to provoke humility there.
I should say that none of this means there's no such thing as objective reality. There (probably) is some kind of objective reality underlying all of this. But we don't have access to that. All we have access to are the incomplete, quirky, partially-wrong realities that live in each of our heads.
Re:The Recovering Programmer (2010)
by alextheparrot on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @12:15PM
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The point of bringing up Gödel was for analogy rather than as a theory of knowledge. I agree there are many germination points for humility, self-sceptism, and general reflection - we’ve together mentioned a few.
I'm not sure Gödel's incompleteness theorems have anything to do with this. After all, they don't show that any system of reasoning is inconsistent - just that it can't prove its own consistency and that there are statements that can be neither true nor false. Even then, it only applies when your system is able to express arithmetic - for basic syllogisms (like "all men are mortal. socrates is a man. therefore socrates is mortal.") this doesn't apply, as far as I understand.
Re:The Recovering Programmer (2010)
by MaxBarraclough on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @07:22AM
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Also, the field of formal methods exists, and is successfully used to develop ultra-low-defect software. The Incompleteness Theorem doesn't stop it dead.
Re:The Recovering Programmer (2010)
by alextheparrot on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @12:04PM
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What was being trying drawn was a parallel from “A numerical system can be hard to prove correct, in unexpected ways” to “A human system can be hard to prove correct, in unexpected ways”. Recognising this is part of accepting ones own limits. Gödel in no way proves this, as you note, and my wording should have made it more clear that I understand that. The essence of his result is easily analogised, though.
Re:The Recovering Programmer (2010)
by yowlingcat on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @09:41AM
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"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
We still need to face reality, so the sceptic can’t take over the asylum, but we shouldn’t act as if the patients monopolise faulty logic. Just the act of listening and trying to really understand what is being communicated, informationally but also emotionally, is also a view we get of ourselves from outside our local system.
Empathy is a lot like that. Understanding that others have had different circumstances, which led them to different thought processes, which we should try to understand and validate. There’s richness to be found in those differences as well. Deep understanding of another allows directness, vulnerability, and passion to shine phosphorescent.