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PhilGoetz comments on Is semiotics bullshit? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (45)
Semiotics, as a description of the entirety of communication, is a set which contains itself, and moreover contains the set theory which says that it contains itself, and also contains every possible notation system by which its properties might be defined.
Any formal process of defining semiotics, in a sense, defines the formal process by which anything is defined.
If semiotics exists in a non-trivial and complete form, it violates Godel's incompleteness theorem, because it encapsulates and defines all possible arithmetic systems, and every possible provable statement within any arithmetic system can be proven within it. Therefore, semiotics must exist, if it exists at all, in a trivial and/or incomplete form.
I'm pretty sure.
Sorry; I don't know why your comment got downvoted so much. It seems reasonable to me.
The parent argument proves too much, I think. Try adding the following, for example:
Since any communication can be described as the transmission of information, and, in order to be transmitted, this information must exist, any formal system of semiotics (providing it exists) can be encompassed by a larger formal system of physics. Taken together with the earlier observation (about the triviality of semiotics) we conclude that any formal explanation of physics must be trivial and/or incomplete.
I think the moral of the story is that one should not attempt to invoke Gödels Incompleteness Theorem in Social Science.
I think the parent argument is saying that a social science should not claim it supersedes logic.
Also, I'm afraid we may both be doing semiotics.
Oh, a number of reasons; The carefree tone of the approach. The implication that I didn't spend too much time considering my opinion. The fact that my carefree, ill-considered tone is combined with a rejection of the idea that studied experts in a particular field actually have a clear idea what they're talking about based on a clearly limited understanding of what it is they're studying, as opposed to your pretty clearly well-thought out and considered response to a field you actually investigated.