As mentioned in the short story, the riddle is described as “the Godel sentence
for the human Turing machine” which causes the mind to jam. Christopher
Cherniak uses this example of human mind-jamming to illustrate to the readers
the difference between the human mind and the machine. This riddle presented
by Christopher Cherniak is to imply that a human mind will fall into a never-
ending loop when presented towards Godel statements that cannot be proven. An
example is a self-reference statement, "This sentence is false." The paradoxes
produce logical mind-jam or mind-loop because the mind will follow the line of
thought: “The sentence is false. If it is false, then what it says isn’t true.
But then the sentence isn’t false. So it’s true. But if it is true then it is
false (because that’s what it says). But then it isn’t true. But then...” The
mind will continuously follow this line of thought and eventually fall into a
mind jam or mind loop. According to Lucas, when a conscious being knows
something, “he knows that he knows it and he knows that he knows it and so
on.” This looping process continues to infinity. It also exists when a mind
considers self-reference statements. However, there are also survivors in this
short story. This is because the riddle will only affect those who
continuously and deeply think about the “Godel sentence”. Those who do not
think deeply about the statement will not be affected.
On the other hand, if this statement is applied to a machine, the machine will
act differently. Since the machine acts according to definite rules as argued
by Lucas, the machine will act according to how it is programmed. The
operations and performance of a machine, a formal consistent system, is
predictable. Therefore, if it is presented with the Godel’s Incompleteness
Theorem, it will not fall into the never-ending loop similar to that of a
mind. It will directly call for the answer pre-programmed in the machine such
as a stop-rule or exception etc and perform accordingly. It is not self-
conscious and cannot think like minds can and therefore cannot act towards self-
reference statements. In addition, chimpanzees, dogs and pigeons are not
affected because they do not have the mind like that of a human mind.
Therefore, they will not understand the self-reference statement presented to
them.
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