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4th European Phd Complexity School

Leibniz, Complexity and Incompleteness

author: Gregory Chaitin, University of Auckland

Description

I will discuss Leibniz's ideas on complexity (Discours de metaphysique, 1686), leading to modern work on program-size complexity, the halting probability and incompleteness. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason asserts that if anything is true it is true for a reason. But the bits of the numerical value of the halting probability are mathematical truths that are true for no reason. More precisely, as I will explain, they are irreducible mathematical truths, that is, true for no reason simpler than themselves.

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Reviews and comments:

Comment1 Donald DeGracia, November 3, 2008 at 2:15 a.m.:

Really brilliant lecture! This fellow is SHARP!!! Let's hear it for empirical mathematics!!

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