THE LOOPHOLE: A logician challenges the Constitution \ stacker news ~science

Following the interesting link posted by @Roll (#754252), I ended up going on a little Godel rabit hole. Other than what is fascinating about his science (see his incompleteness theorems), I enjoyed learning about this little anecdote described in the link of present post...

Aristotle, the second greatest logician of all time, was also an expert on political constitutions. Can the same be said for the greatest logician of all time, Kurt Gödel? Gödel had a genius for detecting the paradoxical in unexpected places. He looked into the axioms of mathematics and saw incompleteness. He looked into the equations of general relativity and saw circular time. And he looked into the Constitution of the United States and saw a logical loophole that could allow a dictator to take power. Or did he?

[...]

But Gödel's research into time travel was interrupted by his citizenship hearing, scheduled for December 5 in Trenton. His character witnesses were to be his close friends Albert Einstein and game theory co-inventor Oskar Morgenstern, who also served that day as his chauffeur. Being a fastidious man, Gödel decided to make a close study of American political institutions in preparation for the exam. On the eve of the hearing, he called Morgenstern in a state of agitation. He had found a logical inconsistency in the Constitution, he said. Morgenstern was amused by this, but he realized that Gödel was deadly serious. He urged him not to mention the matter to the judge, fearing it would jeopardize his citizenship bid.

On the short drive to Trenton the next day, Einstein and Morgenstern tried to distract Gödel with jokes. When they arrived at the court, the judge, Philip Forman, was impressed by Gödel's eminent witnesses, and he invited the trio into his chambers. After some small talk, he said to Gödel, "Up to now you have held German citizenship." No, Gödel corrected, Austrian. "Anyhow," continued the judge, "it was under an evil dictatorship...but fortunately that's not possible in America."

"On the contrary, I know how that can happen," cried Gödel, and he began to explain how the Constitution might permit such a thing to occur. The judge, however, indicated that he was not interested, and Einstein and Morgenstern succeeded in quieting the examinee down. A few months later, Gödel took his oath of citizenship. Writing to his mother back in Vienna, he commented that "one went home with the impression that American citizenship, in contrast to most others, really meant something."

[...]

A couple of other legal scholars I spoke to concurred with Tribe that Article V must have been what was vexing Gödel. But the mystery of whether he found something genuinely kinky in the Constitution remains a bit like the mystery of whether Fermat really had a "marvelous proof" of his last theorem. How I wish I had been the judge at that citizenship hearing. Imagine being presented with the opportunity to lean forward, look this overwrought genius in the eye, and say, "Surely you must be joking, Mr. Gödel."

Do you have any idea about what Godel's loophole could have been?

And do you know of other such trivia about famous scientists?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @konstantin21 5 Nov

Posed the question to AI and this may just be the loophole:

The contradiction Gödel may have identified here is that the Constitution appears to rely on self-consistency for democratic continuity but lacks any intrinsic safeguard against a self-referential modification that would negate its own premises. Thus, Gödel’s concern may have been that the Constitution logically allows for its own undoing in a way that defies the democratic principles it is meant to uphold. This, for a logician, would constitute a true contradiction: a system that both guarantees democracy and allows for the abolition of democracy through its own rules.

This paradox—known in logic as a "self-amendment paradox" or "self-referential inconsistency"—suggests that the Constitution could theoretically enable an amendment that invalidates its own democratic principles or amends away the amendment power itself.

In logical terms, Article V allows the Constitution to be self-modifying, meaning it could alter the very conditions of its own existence. For example:

Scenario 1: Congress or a convention could amend the Constitution to prohibit any further amendments, thus contradicting the very nature of a "living" document. Scenario 2: An amendment could be passed that eliminates all democratic processes, effectively installing a permanent authoritarian regime. In both cases, the Constitution would simultaneously be both democratic (because amendments are allowed by democratic process) and anti-democratic (because the amendments could eliminate democratic processes).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sangekrypto 5 Nov

Godel always corrects what people say, he is very intelligent.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Roll fwd 5 Nov

Thks :)