

Greatest Ideas in History  - denzil_correa
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-7-greatest-ideas-in-history/

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blackhole
The explanation of Godel's incompleteness theorem is extremely bad in this
post. It simply states that a logical system that is consistent can't prove
everything, and if it ever does prove everything it can only do so by being
inconsistent. Likewise, a logical system cannot be used to prove it's own
consistency. Basically it just means if you want to prove that a logical
system is consistent, you need to use a more powerful logical system, and you
can't formulate a consistent logical system that proves everything. It has
absolutely goddamned nothing to do with failing, unless you consider a logical
system only succeeding when it has proven everything in the universe,
including its own consistency, which is just silly. We don't NEED to do that.
His theorem is of extreme importence in proofs and mathematics, because it
means that one can't prove that math is consistent using math, but it has
nothing to do with computer programs /crashing/. That is a gross
misinterpretation.

It's made worse because all computer programs COULD crash simply because they
are implemented on imperfect devices. But this has nothing to do with Godel's
theorem, it has to do with physical limitations. Saying Godel's theorem proves
all programs eventually crash is like saying Einstein's relativity is why time
moves slower when you're bored.

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dimitar
I'm a bit disappointed that none of Keynes ideas were present, and there are
good contenders:

* Unemployment is a involuntary, but there are solutions to it. * Economic crises can be significantly mitigated and avoided with regulation. * Forcing a heavy reparations burden on Germany will undermine peace.

They replaced the previous set of ideas that were more about assigning blame
(crises are a retribution for mistakes and should be allowed to continue,
unemployment is voluntary and Germany must pay).

Without his influence, the world will be a much different place. Much more
than the WWW which is simply one of many possible layers on the Internet.

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lispm
> every logical system will fail and every computer program will crash

that's bullshit.

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oofabz
We had some really good ideas before history too, like trade, agriculture,
sailing, and animal domestication.

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RyanMcGreal
> Not since Aristotle has such an important theory sprung forth from one man,
> seemingly out of thin air

I'm skeptical. Not to make light of the formalization of information theory,
but it seems he was generalizing the idea that you can communicate arbitrary
information using code. As inspirations for this generalization, he was able
to draw upon several existing examples of such systems, including Hollerith's
punch card system that had been around for half a century by that point.

