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Article 5753 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: tolman%asylum.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: penrose
Message-ID: <1992May19.154746.20944@hellgate.utah.edu>
Date: 19 May 92 21:47:45 GMT
References: <1992May18.194416.27171@hellgate.utah.edu> <1992May19.025328.5332@news.media.mit.edu> <1992May19.113549.9679@hellgate.utah.edu> <1992May19.194145.7008@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com>
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 31

>Are you serious?

It is more fun to be mystical, but yes I am serious... (maybe just nuts) 

>Are you
>postulating that rationalism is a dead end, and that by incorporating
>irrationality into what you call a Turing machine, a new level of "insight"?

Hmmm.... I am calling a Turing machine what the authors of many fine books
have called Turing machines.  I suppose that it is a sort of agreed upon
mathematical concept, but perhaps it is not.

But, YES, yes, yes, you have the ticket!

Although it is not so magical after all, for you can do it very easily.
It does not give you the solution to anything, it gives you nothing
immediately.

One might wonder (at least I have) why Hilbert's program failed...
Why did it fail?  Did it really fail?  Why did he propose his program in
the first place, if he did not suspect that it could work?  Then Godel
showed it to be wrong.  What was wrong with it?  It could not escape itself.
You don't need magic or oracles or anything else to escape yourself.  You
do need to have powers greater than a Turing machine.

So now here is a partial solution through questions:

What was it Hilbert *really* wanted to achieve?
Why did he set up this impossible goal, surely he would have realized it
was impossible, for he was a smart dude, unless there was something else
nagging him....


