{"id":4178,"date":"2012-07-31T08:54:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T16:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4178"},"modified":"2016-05-20T13:11:21","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T20:11:21","slug":"conversatons-with-kurt-godel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/31\/conversatons-with-kurt-godel\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations with Kurt G\u00f6del"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think I mentioned this on my blog yet: I scanned my mostly handwritten notes on my conversations with the great logician Kurt G\u00f6del during the years 1972-1977, and saved the scans into a single PDF <\/a>. Once the download finishes (it’s about 15 meg), you can click the book-with-a-ribbon Bookmarks button on the left side of the PDF viewer to separate out the six different files. My notes are a little hard to decipher in spots, and often rather mathematical, but here they are for the historical record, treasures from the Rucker vaults.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Reading them, I was amused by my temerity in arguing about things with G\u00f6del. Arrogant young pup that I was. But maybe he was entertained by that. I liked when in my 1975 phone call G\u00f6del tells me, vis a vis the offbeat ideas about set theory I held at that time\u2014\u201cBut no one in the whole world agrees with you.\u201d\u009d He wasn\u2019t one to soft-pedal his opinions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And I like the bit in the very last 1977 phone exchange when, as an example of unpredictability or of free will, I’m talking about how one makes a decision about which shoe to put on first, and G\u00f6del seems to say, \u201cBut why wear shoes?\u201d\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe I can take that as a metaphor! But why wear shoes? Indeed.<\/p>\n

Most of the notes are hand-written or typed, but here’s a doodle I made talking to him on the phone, March 10, 1972, mostly talking about set theory and transfinite numbers, with logic and philosophy of mathematics mixed in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The good old days, my golden dawn.<\/p>\n

For more on my meetings with G\u00f6del see my memoir essay “Memories of G\u00f6del”<\/a> in the next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think I mentioned this on my blog yet: I scanned my mostly handwritten notes on my conversations with the great logician Kurt G\u00f6del during the years 1972-1977, and saved the scans into a single PDF . Once the download finishes (it’s about 15 meg), you can click the book-with-a-ribbon Bookmarks button on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6927,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions\/6927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}