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You Are Your Axioms: Robert Brown

The Axiom of Open Mindedness: All axiomatic systems with any degree of complexity are likely self-referential, incomplete and inconsistent (including this one, as this axiom just referred to itself). I will therefore provisionally reject all Axioms or sets of Axioms (but this one) that claim completeness, overtly refer to themselves, or are explicitly and obviously inconsistent.
The provisional part is because (like any good jigsaw puzzle or crossword puzzle) one sometimes has to try different pieces in different places because an inconsistency could occur because a lot of the existing pieces are wrong, but the piece being tried is right.



Robert G. Brown 2003-05-13