OT: This One Is For Briliu: (Kinda Long)

[96gs]

A young couple were driving down the road one day, happily, deliriously in love and
due to be married the next day. Suddenly, a large truck swerved from the oncoming
lanes into their car! BOOM! And they both died.

At the Pearly Gates, the young couple confronted St. Peter. "Sir, you have to help
us! We were to be married tomorrow. Is there any way we can be married in Heaven?"

"Hmmm," replied St. Peter, "I don't recall there ever being a marriage in Heaven.
Well, let's take it up with God and see what he says."

So they approached God with their plea. God sat for a moment, pondering the request.
Then he looked down and said, "Come back in five years and ask me again."
Five years later, the couple approached God again, even more in love than ever and
pleading that he allow their marriage. God paused for quite a while, musing over
their request. Then he spoke, "Come back in five years and ask me again."

And once again, five years later, the couple was again in the presence of God, more
in love than ever and begging God's permission for the third time to marry. This
time God smiled broadly and thundered, "Yes my children, you may marry!"

Well, the wedding went off beautifully, the reception was huge, everyone thought the
bride was simply breathtaking and the groom was soooo handsome, and everyone was
happy! Until...

Two years later, the couple was back before God, and things were not looking so
good. The couple had come to the realization almost immediately that although
marriages were made in heaven, they didn't last very long there! And, in spite of
their struggles to come to terms with the situation, they had decided there simply
was no alternative but to get a divorce.

Black clouds fractured by lightening rolled across the sky, and the ground shook
with explosive thunder. God glared down at the tiny couple before him, his face
becoming dark and angry, and he roared, "Divorce?! Impossible!!! It took us TEN
years just to find a priest in Heaven! Do you have any idea how long it will take to
find a LAWYER?!!"

[Briliu]

WOW, that was great. Haha, dude, you got me laughing so hard now i cant do my homework!! I had no idea where that one was going untill the end!  :lol: I wuv you man  :kiss:      ! 2 great jokes in one night, i dunno if im going to be able to get to bed.

[96gs]

dont worry. many from where that came from. you just say the word. (hint the word is joke)

[Briliu]

jkoe? koje? eokj? eojk? am i close? or is it Joke? ah thats it!

i've got something rather profound to share! It will make the laws of logic completly collapse upon themselves and explode. It is contained with in the * *


*
I am about to say something true.
I've just said something false.
*

That is so mind blowing its impossible. If the first one is true, then the second one is true, making the first one false, which makes the second one false, which makes the first one.... im confused.....

[Kerry]

Briliu,

You've just experienced a small taste of the mind-blowing-ness of Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.  He was able to prove (back in the 30's!) an astonishing conclusion about any set of assumptions / axioms / rules that is sufficiently complex (like Euclidian geometry, or other branches of mathematics or logic).

The conclusion?  That all such systems are "incomplete".  You can follow the rules of any such system to create "legal" statements that cannot be "proved" within the system.  Also, that there are "truths" that you can't even state using the rules!

I'm not sure I've accurately captured the gist of Godel's theorem.  But there are lots of books about it - one of the best and most entertaining is the 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning Godel, Escher, Bach: An Etrnal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

If you try to read the (thick) book straight through it's pretty heavy stuff.  But it's a delight to skip around in.  Especially the "dialogues" between Achilles and the Tortoise and others.  One of Hofstadter's early exhibits is a "self-referential sentence" - similar to your two-sentence construct, but more compact:  "This sentence is false."

If you have plans to go far in computer science, you may eventually get the chance to study computability, where you will become acquainted with the (Alan) Turing Machine and Godel Numbers and all kinds of mind-blowing stuff.

[Wakes up]
Where am I...?  Wow, I must have wandered here from sci.philosophy.meta....

[The Buddha]

Kerry you were sleep surfing... Happens to all of us...
Cool.
Srinath.

[scratch]

Oh, that one is GREAT!!! :lol:

[Briliu]

Kerry,

I went out and got that book from the library, I read through the first Tortoise and Achilles thing, titled "Little Harmonic Labyrinth" that was rather intense, a few parts were really funny in it too. That thing about GOD and all that was hilarious.