Hi Ken--

> I read and enjoyed Gödel, Escher, Bach when it was new so I'm having
> troubles remembering what it has to say about always getting caught
> cheating (in the sense we are talking about). Maybe a few sentences
> expanding upon why there is the "incompleteness" property would be
> helpful.

	I was alluding to two things...

-	Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which roughly states that, given any
formal system, there are true statements which are not expressible
within that system
-	Hofstadter's analogical fables in which Achilles builds ever more
sophisticated record-players, and the Tortoise keeps making them vibrate
to death with ever more sophisticated records

	Unfortunately, I only have time right now to take Gödel's theorem as
given. :)  But I think both GEB and "Gödel's Proof" by Nagel and Newman
are good explanations.

> As I recall the early actor languages (Plasma and Act 1) had no such
> problem. And a more recent example is Joule
> (http://www.agorics.com/Library/joule.html). In particular see the
> section 1.3.5 on Complete Virtualizability in the Foundations
> chapter.

	Hmm, I'm unfamiliar with all of those. Thanks for the references!

> ...either I and the authors of these other languages are confused or
> else this "incompleteness" property can be avoided with the right
> protocols and implementations.

	My sense so far is that, like the Tortoise in Hofstadter's fables, one
can always devise an application for a software system which breaks the
continuity provided by the implementation. I think it's a very
interesting hypothesis; I'm interested in thinking more about it.


	thanks again,

-C

--
Craig Latta
composer and computer scientist
craig.latta at netjam.org
www.netjam.org
crl at watson.ibm.com
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]