Дон Андре's blog/

I can't get this tune out of my head, so I'll pass it to everyone :-)

Btw, the story in this movie reminds me of the guy who traded a paperclip for a house: http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com

So some people who know me better have heard this already. I'm quite fascinated with a sentence in a book I have read (partly, I'm still reading it, for months). It is from Heinz von Förster, an austro-american scientist who died 7 years ago. In his book, and in big fat letters on the back, he states that "Only the principally undecideable questions can be decided by us". This seems self-contradictory at first. So, hmm what is decideable?

Wikipedia says on Desideability: "In logic, the term decidable refers to the existence of an effective method for determining membership in a set of formulas." Correct me if I'm wrong, but in other words this means a question is decideable if its answer can be computed.

The core meaning of von Förster's statement now is that when a question is decideable it means the answer is given, respectively there is an effective method for computing the answer.
E.g. what is 5 + 3? We know that it is 8. 5 + 3 is a decideable question. On the other hand there are a lot of questions which are not decideable like what is ethical behavior? Where do you draw a line? This is principally undecideable (until proven to be decideable) and as such we must decide it and define it. Heinz von Förster further explains that your decision in these undecideable questions forms your character. Well okay...

In any case I think this is an interesting thought experiment: To decide the undecideable is the mission that we're facing. And continuing here, if we are to build and design, let's say a humanoid robot we have to implement these decisions there. This is when Asimov came up with the 3 fundamental laws of robotics which rule that no robot shall harm a human being or let a human being come to harm through not acting. To harm or not to harm a human being is also something that is mostly undecideable and thus Asimov prespecified this decision in every robot such that they are basically peaceful beings. Von Förster probably wasn't so far off with describing character based on ones stance in such decisions.