not that I'd bet on this strategy...

"You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction," said the angel. "It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moments of apparent triumph. No matter how grandiose, how well-planned, how apparently foolproof an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of iniquity and sink headfirst to vanish without trace into the seas of obilivion."

-- Terry Prachet & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

random paradox

I'm currently reading Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. (He's the guy who came-up with "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law".) It's... an interesting read.

Part of the basis of the book is Kurt Gödel's theories of Incompleteness. One of which is "If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within itself, then it is inconsistent".

This is a rephrasing of Gödel's second incompleteness theorem can be stated as follows:

"For any formal theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, T includes a statement of its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent"

In other words, it's a paradox. Bach's work is outrageously complex, but not paradoxical. Hofstadter uses the musical form of Fuge, in general, and Bach's use of it in particular, as a formative guide for the presentation of the book. Hofstadter's law is an example of self-reference that is the heart of paradox. Escher's work is, in large part, visual paradoxes where identifying the self-reference points are the keys to rationalization.

I'm really hoping this ends as well as it's been set-up.