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Sisyphus in front of the mirror of Erised

  • Prof Arindama Singh, MA, IITM

"As the myth goes, Sisyphus was cursed to carry a heavy piece of stone to the top of a hill; and as soon as he places it there, the stone rolls back to the ground. Once again he carries it to its intended place. In the mirror of Erised, one is supposed to see one's own desires throwing open the casket of bad faith. When Sisyphus looks at the mirror of Erised, in the background of a rich formal system, all sorts of paradoxes appear. We will not enter the labyrinth of paradoxes, for the weird mirror might drive us to insanity. We will rather take help from a small machine ""SisEr"" to walk around the labyrinth. The machine works with just four symbols and poses a puzzle to the arrogant mathematician. We will show how the puzzle crushes the arrogance of the mathematician leading him/her to realize the limitations. The mathematician sees clearly that his/her god called ""proof"" is just incapable of catching the ""truth"". "