XPost: sci.psychology.psychotherapy, alt.consciousness, talk.origins   
   From: RemoveThisPrefixmatts2nospam@ix.netcom.com   
      
   On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:59:19 +0000 (UTC), farchy@u.washington.edu   
   (Floyd) wrote:   
      
   [snip]   
      
   >Kurt Gödel was born in 1906.  By the 1970s, he was in his late 60s or   
   >early 70s.  The average life expectancy for someone born in the US in   
   >the early years of the 20th century was a few decades less than that,   
   >and Gödel was born in eastern Europe (then Brünn, Austria-Hungary, now   
   >Brno, Czech Republic) where life expectency was even shorter.  Thus he   
   >was quite elderly by the time Rucker met him.   
      
   Gödel also starved himself to death, it was a long slow processes.   
   Anyone who had met him in those last years would have expected to hear   
   of his death.   
      
   >Dreaming that an   
   >elderly respected colleague passed away is not all that surprising.   
   >Did Dr. Rucker report dreaming about Gödel any other times?  I ask   
   >because it is quite easy to speculate that this is an example of   
   >"counting the hits and forgetting the misses", which is a quite common   
   >phenomenon in psychology (people like John Edward rely on this   
   >phenomenon for their stage shows).   
   >   
   >It also seems curious that you take the account of a young PhD who had   
   >met Gödel once or twice seriously, but neglect any mention of the   
   >experiences of others who were closer to Gödel during life.   
      
   People who knew Gödel well at that time would have known that he   
   suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Not a man to take life advice   
   from even if he appeared in a dream.   
      
   [snip]   
      
      
   --   
   Matt Silberstein   
      
   Do in order to understand.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)