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Comment by rothrock | Hacker News Reader

Gödel also believed his refrigerator was emitting poison gas.

That's a bit dismissive. Goedel was correct about making the US a dictatorship. The fact that the amending clause allows unlimited amendment (particularly of the amending clause itself) means a series of malicious amendments could irrevocably change the constitution to that of a dictatorship and forbid returning to a democracy. Now maybe people would just give up on the constitution at that point, but in terms of the overall legal system he's dead right.

[edit: for more information please see: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2010183 ]

I've always thought it was more likely over article 2 section 3, which allows the President to adjourn both houses of Congress indefinitely under certain circumstances. If one was expecting to be impeached, for example, a little procedural hiccup on the timetable of adjournment would be sufficient to suspend legislative business altogether.

Let's hope that his insights won't be put to the test.

When we get to that level of a flaw, it is nice to remember that technically our own hollowed constitution is simply an illegal overwrite of the Articles of Confederation.

Back then, wouldn't it have been? I think they used ammonia as a coolant initially.

Freon, from Wikipedia:

> They are stable, nonflammable, moderately toxic gases or liquids which have typically been used as refrigerants and as aerosol propellants.

Edit: why am I getting downvoted for this...?

“back then”

... yes? Freon was used widely as far back as 1935. Invented in late 20's.

And overlapped with ammonia for quite some time.

I'm not sure. I think you're right, from this timeline: http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3854

Freon was invented in 1928, and started mass production a few years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freon

By 1935, 8 million refrigerators had been sold using Freon as their refrigerant: https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-freon-4072212

His refrigerator comment was some time before 1953: https://plus.maths.org/content/goumldel-and-limits-logic though another source places it around Einstein's death in 1955:[1]

... ahhh, the wiki hole is deep today. :)

[Edited to fix: date of refrigerator comment upper bounded by 1953, not in 1953]. So it's possible he formed the opinion pre-freon, but it seems more likely that it was during the Freon era.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=iWy1AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA332&lpg=...

To be fair CFCs are toxic to humans, but only once they escape to the upper atmosphere to decrease the LD50 of sunlight. Of course in 1953, there was no way Erdos could have known that.

Still not a reason to downvote a comment that just clarified its parent.

What's the LD50 of sunlight, and how exactly does Erdős enter into the equation?

Ugh I meant Godel. All of these mathematicians get me confused. Because of his incompleteness theorem, I'll have to leave your other question unanswered.

Fun fact: Gödel's Erdős number is 3.

https://oakland.edu/enp/erdpaths/

Ammonia and other nasty chemicals remained in use well after then. For example, apparently GE sold their Monitor Top-style fridges with sulphur dioxide or methyl formate as the refrigerant until at least 1936 and they stayed in use for decades after they were discontinued.

My parents had one of those and used it until the early 2000's as their "garage beer fridge". They sold it for a substantial amount to a collector when they moved. Dad was a chemical engineer and I'm not sure he knew how toxic the refrigerant it contained was - he probably would have gotten rid of it sooner if he'd known.

Yes, his mental health was complicated. Doesn't negate his theoretical contributions though.

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