Re: : OT: Gödel's incompleteness theorems

[Christopher Browne]

On 8/15/06, moliver-fC0AHe2n+mcIvw5+aKnW+Pd9D2ou9A/h at public.gmane.org <moliver-fC0AHe2n+mcIvw5+aKnW+Pd9D2ou9A/h at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Quoting Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>:
> (presumably quoting someone else)
> > Oddly enough, this is completely standard behaviour for shells. This
> > is a roundabout way of saying `don't use combined chains of `&&'s and
> > `||'s unless you think Gödel's theorem is for sissies'.
>
> Hi Christopher,
>
> would you mind giving the context of your .sig?  It doesn't
> seem to make a lot of sense on its own -- for one thing,
> the Gödel theorems don't apply to propositional logic,
> as the latter is too weak for the theorems to attach.
> You need quantifiers before you get any nontrivial application
> of Gödel.

It's a quote from in the middle of some of the zsh documentation...
<http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Guide/zshguide03.html>

See section 3.8.1.

The point of the quote isn't about an actual application of Gödel's
theorem; it's that there's a shell behaviour that, much like Gödel's
theorem, is difficult to understand and to properly apply.  (What?!?
Treating formal systems as equations involving compositions of powers
of prime numbers!?!?!)

And the *real* point of the quote is that anything that says "Gödel's
theorem is for sissies" has got to be an entertaining quote...

I should look at changing the quote...  Perhaps something like...

"This chapter will appeal above all to people who are excited by the fact that
  print ${array[(r)${(l.${#${(O@)array//?/X}[1]}..?.)}]}
prints out the longest element of the array $array. For the
overwhelming majority that forms the rest of the population, however,
there should be plenty that is useful before we reach that stage.
Anyway, it should be immediately apparent why there is no obfuscated
zsh code competition."

Of course, anyone that would get excited about that probably also fits
into the category of "people who think Gödel's theorem is for
sissies"...
-- 
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/linux.html
Oddly enough, this is completely standard behaviour for shells. This
is a roundabout way of saying `don't use combined chains of `&&'s and
`||'s unless you think Gödel's theorem is for sissies'.
--
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