Papal bull

[simont]

At stephdiary's house last night there was a silly conversation about papal infallibility, and how the Pope is only infallible when he specifically says he's being infallible. It occurred to me that this was probably just as well, since you'd hate to be burdened with the responsibility of infallibility when you'd just got up and were wittering incoherently over your breakfast.

This morning I got up, saw the ‘1’ on my calendar, and while still half asleep said to myself ‘oh yes, it's July now’. I think that proves my point. If I'd been the Pope and my infallibility had been always-on, there's no telling what might have happened to the nature of time and causality as a result of that absent-minded misstatement!

Comments

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Indeed. See Hofstadter's "Goedel Escher Bach" (as I'm sure you have done) for more; much more! :-)

[simont]

Indeed I have :-) I borrowed it in my sixth form from a maths teacher who'd been struggling through it all term. I think he was a bit disheartened when I got it back to him within 48 hours, bouncing up and down and going "wow, what an amazing book"...

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Hee hee :-))

I have started it three times, once in each year of University. The first time I got about a quarter of the way through before giving it up with brain-ache; the second time I got about half way through before ditto, and the third time, finally, I finished it. With brain-ache :-)