From: tburns@mason1.gmu.edu (T. David Burns)
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 94 10:21:25 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: FWD: Chaitin speaks near D.C.
Message-ID: <199402201803.AA12818@ponyexpress.princeton.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


If anyone wants to go, I doubt that you have to be an official member of
WESS to attend. You are required to buy dinner, however.

Dave
---------  forwarded message follows  --------------------
Dear WESSers:

  The next general dinner meeting is scheduled for March 1, 1994, at
 Jacques Cafe, 4001 Fairfax Drive in Arlington, VA. The schedule for
 the evening is as usual: Cocktails at 6:00PM, Dinner at 7:00 PM and
 the talk at about 8:15 PM.


The speaker is Dr. Gregory Chaitin of Watson Research Laboratories of
International Business Corporation.  Dr. Chaitin is internationally
recognized for his work on theories of randomness.  ( The tensions between the
traditional theories of randomness and the emerging theories of nonlinear
deterministic behavior should prove to be stimulating.)

The following dinner meeting will be held on March 28th, 1994.  The
speaker will be Dr. Ben Weems who will discuss "The Evolution of
Cognitive Structures".

Dr. Koichiro Matsuno (Professor of Biophysics, Nagaoka University) will be
visiting the Washington area from March 27, 1994 to March 29, 1994.  He is
interested in meeting with WESS members during that period.  Please drop me a
note so that I can arrange a mutually agreeable schedule or contact him directly
via Internet at (kmatsuno@voscc.nagaokaut.ac.jp).

Jerry

Abstract

==================================================================

THE LIMITS OF MATHEMATICS

G. J. Chaitin
IBM Research Division
P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
chaitin@watson.ibm.com

One normally thinks that everything that is true is true for a reason.
I've found mathematical truths that are true for no reason at all.
These mathematical truths are beyond the power of mathematical
reasoning because they are accidental and random.

=====================

GREGORY CHAITIN is a member of the computer science department at the
IBM Watson Research Center in New York.  In the mid 1960s, when he was
a teenager, he created algorithmic information theory, which combines,
among other elements, Shannon's information theory and Turing's theory
of computability.  In the three decades since then he has been the
principal architect of the theory.  Among his contributions are the
definition of a random sequence via algorithmic incompressibility, and
his information-theoretic approach to Godel's incompleteness
theorem.  His work on Hilbert's 10th problem has shown that in a sense
there is randomness in arithmetic, in other words, that God not only
plays dice in quantum mechanics and nonlinear dynamics, but even in
elementary number theory.  He is the author of three books:
ALGORITHMIC INFORMATION THEORY published by Cambridge University
Press, and INFORMATION, RANDOMNESS & INCOMPLETENESS and
INFORMATION-THEORETIC INCOMPLETENESS, both published by World
Scientific.

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      Jerry LR Chandler, Ph.D.                  Phone: 301-496-1846
      Epilepsy Br. National Inst Health         Fax    301-496-9916
      Bethesda, Maryland 20892                  Home   703-790-1651

      chandler@casa.ninds.nih.gov    OR    chandler@helix.nih.gov

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