Gregory Chaitin Talks Gödel, Computer Science, and the Blessing of Children

On today’s ID the Future from the vault, we’re pleased to feature a cross-post from our sister podcast Mind Matters. Here, host Robert J. Marks begins a conversation with trailblazing mathematician and computer scientist Gregory Chaitin. The two discuss Chaitin’s beginnings in computer science, his growing up in the 1960s a stone’s throw from Central Park, his thoughts on historic scientists in his field such as Leonard Euler and Kurt Gödel, and the story of Chaitin’s thwarted meeting with the famed German-Austrian logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Also touched on: Gödel’s ontological proof for the existence of God and how children can be said to have solved Chaitin’s incompleteness problem!