Title: From Greek Paradoxes to Political Paradoxes
Abstract: The ancient Greeks invented logic, as a tool to discover eternal truths. They also invented paradoxes, as a tool to sharpen the mind. Famous Greek paradoxes are the Liar's Paradox, Zeno's Paradox, and the Sand-Heap Paradox. The Liar's Paradox led, at the start of the 20th Century, to a foundational crisis of mathematics, which led to the development of computability theory in the 1930s, as well as the unresolvable mathematical conundrum of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.
Computing technology, which also emerged in the 1930s, ultimately led, at the start of the 21 Century, to the emergence of social media. Today, our society is struggling with the adverse societal effects of social media. These adverse effects can also be understood in terms of the Greek paradoxes, as well as their political versions, known as the Popperian Paradoxes. In fact, one can say that the Greek myths of Prometheus and Pandora already told us that technology does not come without adverse consequences, which is why John von Neumann, one of the most prominent computing pioneers, asked in 1955, "Can we survive technology?"
Find here information on how to register for the talk https://logicday.vcla.at/vienna-logic-day-lecture/
Registration is free.
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