The Limits of Understanding

[1:32:59]

Participants: Gregory Chaitin, Mario Livio, Marvin Minsky, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Original Program Date: June 4, 2010

Paul Nurse’s Introduction. 00:19

Who is Kurt Godel? 03:36

Participant Introductions. 07:22

What was the intellectual environment Godel was living in? 10:57

Godel’s beliefs in Platonism. 19:45

Gregory Chaitin on the incompleteness theorem. 22:30

Platonism vs. Formalism. 27:18

The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the world. 40:53

The world is built out of mathematics… what else would you make it out of? 47:44

Mathematics and consciousness. 53:29

What are the problems of building a machine that has consciousness? 01:01:09

If math isn’t a formal system then what is it? 01:07:40

Explaining math with simple computer programs. 01:18:33

Its hard to find good math. 01:25:40

[Source: World Science Festival YouTube link]