blog.philcrissman.com

For some reason, I enjoy making self-referential New Year’s resolutions.

For example, let’s say that last year I resolved to keep the resolution which I would make the following year. A bit strange, but there seems to be no reason I can’t resolve to do something in the future. New Year’s resolutions in general are a statement about what you intend to do in the future.

Now, this year I resolve to break the resolution I made last year.

I’m not going to bother writing down the reasoning that follows this, but I’ll pause while you take a moment and work it out. If you want.

It essentially a form of the “The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence if false.” sort of thing, applied to New Year’s resolutions. The significance of this is difficult to convey, and I’d be the first to say that I’m not the person you want to go to if you’re looking for a complete explanation of Gödel’s theorem. But since it was Hofstadter’s excellent book on that subject that sparked my interest in computer science in the first place, I maintain a friendly attachment to this sort of thought experiment.