Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Request For Ammendment To Goodwin's Law

Not like I'm trying to be all Good Math, Bad Math or anything, but this comment at Protein Wisdon reminded me of something I've been meaning to mention. I think we need to ammend Goodwin's Law, or at least have a new but similar law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of an over-generalization of the incompleteness theorem approaches one.

The notion that formal systems have limits shouldn't "forestall any talk of absolutes" anymore than the speed of light should "forestall any talk of making cars go faster."