Incompleteness, Complexity, Randomness and

Beyond

Cristian S. Calude
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand
Email: [email protected]

The Library is composed of an . . . infinite number of hexagonal galleries . . . [it]

includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthograph-
ical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense. . . . These phrases, at
first glance incoherent, can no doubt be justified in a cryptographical or allegorical
manner; such a justification is verbal and, ex hypothesi, already figures in the Li-
brary. . . . The certitude that some shelf in some hexagon held precious books and
that these precious books were inaccessible seemed almost intolerable. A blasphemous
sect suggested that . . . all men should juggle letters and symbols until they con-
structed, by an improbable gift of chance, these canonical books . . . but the Library
is . . . useless, incorruptible, secret.
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel”

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems have the same scientific status as Einstein’s princi-
ple of relativity, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Watson and Crick’s double helix
model of DNA. Our aim is to discuss some new faces of the incompleteness phenomenon
unveiled by an information-theoretic approach to randomness and recent developments
in quantum computing.

1 Incompleteness and Uncomputability

Interest in incompleteness dates from early times. Incompleteness was an important

issue for Aristotle, Kant, Gauss, Kronecker, but it didn’t have a fully explicit, precise
meaning before the works of Hilbert and Ackermann, Whitehead and Russell, Gödel and
Turing.

In a famous lecture before the International Congress of Mathematicians (Paris,

1900), David Hilbert expressed his conviction of the solvability of every mathematical
problem: “Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen.” (We must know. We will know.).
Hilbert highlighted the need to clarify the methods of mathematical reasoning, using a
formal system of explicit assumptions, or axioms. Hilbert’s vision was the culmination
of 2,000 years of mathematics going back to Euclidean geometry. He stipulated that
such a formal axiomatic system should be both ‘consistent’ (free of contradictions) and
‘complete’ (in that it represents all the truth).

In their monumental Principia Mathematica (1925-1927), Whitehead and Russell

developed the first coherent and precise formal system aimed to describe the whole
of mathematics. Although Principia Mathematica held a great promise for Hilbert’s
demand, it fell short of actually proving its completeness.

After proving the completeness of the system of predicate logic in his doctoral dis-
sertation (1929), Gödel has continued the investigation of the completeness problem for
more comprehensive formal systems, especially systems encompassing all known methods
of mathematical proof. In 1931 (see [44]) Gödel proved his famous First Incompleteness
Theorem, which in modern terms reads:

any computably enumerable, consistent formal axiomatic system containing

elementary arithmetic is incomplete, that is, there exist true, but unprovable
(within the system) statements.

The system is computably enumerable if its ‘theorems’ can be listed by a Turing machine.
Informally, the set of axioms and deduction rules generates all ‘theorems’; for example,
we cannot take as axioms all true statements about natural numbers as this set is not
computably enumerable. The condition that the system contains the elementary arith-
metic is also essential. For example, the Euclidean geometry which makes statements
only about points, circles and lines in general does not satisfy this condition, hence it
might be complete; and, indeed, it is complete as Tarski has proved. The flat nature of
the Euclidean geometry plays no role here, non-Euclidean geometries are also complete.

This result together with the Second Incompleteness Theorem (which states that the
consistency of the axioms cannot be proved within the system) ended a hundred years
of attempts to establish axioms to put mathematics on an axiomatic basis. Gödel’s In-
completeness Theorem does not destroy the fundamental idea of formalism, but suggests
that a) mathematics will be described by many formal systems instead of a universal one,
b) a more sophisticated and comprehensive form of formal system than that envisaged
by Hilbert is required (see also Post [65]).

Anticipating resistance to his conclusions Gödel wrote his papers very carefully. Spec-
ulating on his extreme caution, Feferman [43] stated that Gödel “could have been more
centrally involved in the development of the fundamental concepts of modern logic –
truth and computability – than he was.” Gödel took pain to convince various people
about the validity of his assertions and results, but he avoided any public debate and
considered his results to have been accepted by those whose opinion mattered to him.
For example, P. Finsler, E. Post and E. Zermelo were concerned with priority issues,
while C. Perelman, M. Barzin, J. Kuczyński asserted that Gödel had in fact discovered
another antinomy; see [37]. Unlike the others, Post expressed “the greatest admiration”
for Gödel’s work, conceding that “after all it is not ideas but the execution of ideas that
constitute[s] . . . greatness”. Gödel’s result provoked Hilbert’s anger, but he apparently
accepted its correctness (cf. [37]). Hilbert never cited Gödel’s work.

2
 The reactions of two great philosophers are also of interest. Wittgenstein’s negative
comments (dated 1938 and posthumously published in “Remarks on the foundations of
mathematics” in [86]) are now generally considered an embarrassment in the work of a
great philosopher. Russell realized the importance of Gödel’s work, but expressed his
continuous puzzlement in a rather ambiguous way in a letter from 1 April 1963 (addressed
to L. Henkin; see [37]): Are we to think that 2+2 is not 4, but 4.001?. Following the same
source, Gödel remarked (in a letter addressed to A. Robinson) that “Russell evidently
misinterprets my result; however he does so in a very interesting manner . . . ”.

In the long run Gödel’s interpretations of incompleteness prevailed: the Incomplete-

ness Theorems neither rejected the notion of formal system (quite the opposite) nor
caused despair over the imposed limitations; they just re-affirmed the creative power
of human reason. In Post’s celebrated words: “mathematical proof is [an] essentially
creative [activity].”

In 1936 Turing [80] showed the undecidability of the Halting Problem, the question
of whether a given computer program will eventually halt:

no mechanical procedure (therefore no formal axiomatic theory) can solve the

Halting Problem.

These two results have very deep connections. To understand them we need to
examine a very delicate notion: randomness.

2 Randomness
What is randomness? Are there random events in nature? Are there laws of randomness?
Even today, these few questions stir controversy.

I am convinced that the vast majority of my readers, and in fact the vast
majority of scientists and even nonscientists, are convinced that they know
what ‘random’ is. A toss of a coin is random; so is a mutation, and so is the
emission of an alpha particle. . . . Simple, isn’t it? said Kac in [51].

Well, no! Kac knew very well that randomness, the very stuff of life, could be
called many things, but not simple. The fact that maintaining perfect order is difficult
surprises no one, but it may come as something of a “revelation” that perfect disorder
is beyond reach. People, even experts, perform poorly when dealing with randomness.
The “gambler fallacy” is a classical example: the common belief that after a sequence of
losses in a game of chance there will probably follow a sequence of gains is false. Various
explanations have been suggested: according to one of them, the human cognitive and
psychological constitution, trained over the years to look for patters and trends (even
where there are none) is “blind” when it comes to see randomness.

Randomness is a most troubling concept – it is hard not only to attain but also to
define or even to imagine in spite of the fact that have been heroic efforts to understand
randomness (cf. Efron (cited in Kolata [55]).

Books on probability theory do not even attempt to define it: It’s like the concept of
a point in geometry books. According to Beltrami [5]):

3
 The subject of probability begins by assuming that some mechanism of un-
certainty is at work giving rise to what is called randomness, but it is not
necessary to distinguish between chance that occurs because of some hidden
order that may exist and chance that is the result of blind lawlessness. This
mechanism, figuratively speaking, churns out a succession of events, each in-
dividually unpredictable, or it conspires to produce an unforeseeable outcome
each time a large ensemble of possibilities is sampled.

Randomness means the absence of order or pattern. In an extreme sense there is

no such notion as “true randomness”. As an illustration note that any sequence (the
simplest mathematical infinite object) has some kind of order, regularity. For example,
van der Waerden (1927) proved that in all binary sequences at least one of the two
symbols must occur in arithmetical progressions of every length. Many other patterns
common to all sequences have been subsequently discovered.

Randomness as pattern-breaking (within a given context) can be viewed in (at least)

four ways:

 Randomness as the output of a “chance” process: patterns are specified by a set of

very small probability.

 Randomness as the result of “mixing”: far-from-equilibrium-states specify the pat-

terns.

 Randomness as “mimicking chance”: statistical tests specify the patterns.

 Randomness as a measure of incompressibility: low complexity (short) programs

specify the patterns.

In what follows, we will focus on the information-theoretic approach to randomness

proposed by Algorithmic Information Theory. To this aim we will work with a fixed
alphabet Σ and a universal self-delimiting Turing machine (shortly, universal Chaitin
machine) U processing strings (over Σ) into strings. Self-delimiting means that no halting
program is a prefix of another. In this context universality is a stronger property than
classical (Turing) universality: not only the universal machine can simulate every other
machine, but the simulation is done in the most economical way. Formally, universality
means that the program-size complexity induced by U

HU (x) = min{|w| | U (w) = x}

is asymptotical optimal, i.e. for every Chaitin machine C,

HU (x) ≤ HC (x) + O(1).

There are various equivalent ways to define the notion of (algorithmic) ran-
dom sequence: measure-theoretical definitions (Martin-Löf [63, 62] and Solovay [74]),
information-theoretical definitions (Chaitin [23] and Schnorr), topological definition
(Hertling and Weihrauch [50]). The information-theoretic characterizations read:

4
 An infinite sequence x = x1 x2 . . . xn . . . is Chaitin random if
limn→∞ HU (x1 x2 . . . xn ) − n = ∞; x is Schnorr random if there is a con-
stant c > 0 such that HU (x1 x2 . . . xn ) > n − c, for every integer n > 0.

A real α is random if its binary expansion is a random (infinite) sequence (Chaitin

[23]); the choice of base is irrelevant (Calude and Jürgensen [15], Hertling and Weihrauch
[50], Staiger [79]).

Random reals share many properties naturally associated with randomness:

• a random real has maximum entropy,

• no random real is computable,

• the digits of a random real are ‘generated’ in an unpredictable way,

• global disorder contrasts with local total order (any pattern appears).

3 Information-Theoretic Incompleteness

Is there any relation between randomness and incompleteness? The answer is affirmative
and one possibility to reveal such relations is to look at a special class of reals – the
computable enumerable reals (see Soare [72]).

Turing’s argument was based on computable real numbers. A real is computable if

there is a computable function for√calculating its digits one by one (see Rice [67]. There
are programs for calculating π, e, 3, log 2 3, all rationals, all algebraic reals, and in fact
all “natural” constants, but it is a bit surprising that nearly all real numbers are not
computable.

A real α is computably enumerable (c.e.) if it is the limit of a computable, increasing,

converging sequence of rationals. In contrast with the case of a computable real, whose
digits are given by a computable function, during the process of approximation of a
c.e. real one may never know how close one is to the final value. Specker [76] gave the
first example of a convergent, computable sequence of rationals which does not converge
computably, hence its limit is a c.e. real which is not computable.

In 1975 a more modern version of the Halting Problem emerged. Chaitin [23] intro-
duced the probability that an arbitrary universal Chaitin machine will eventually halt:
X
ΩU = 2−|x| .
U (x) stops

The number ΩU is a probability because of Kraft’s inequality (which applies to the

set of halting programs of the self-delimiting machine U ). Chaitin’s Omega reals share
two apparently irreconcilable properties: ‘algorithmic randomness’ and ‘computable enu-
merability’. Note also that c.e. and random reals have many other interesting properties;
for example, they are weak truth-table-complete, but not truth-table-complete (Calude
and Nies [17]).

5
 Each ΩU depends on the choice of U , so there is not just one Omega (as there is
only one π), but a class of Omegas. This observation leads to Solovay’s question ([74]):
Are there random and computably enumerable real numbers other than Omegas? The
answer is negative, and the proof is constructive, cf. Calude, Hertling, Khoussainov,
Wang [14], Slaman [71] (see also Kučera and Slaman [58]):

Let α ∈ (0, 1). The following conditions are equivalent:

1. The real α is c.e. and random.

2. The real α is the halting probability of some universal Chaitin machine
U , α = ΩU .

To make the discussion more concrete we will formulate all results relative to ZF C,
Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with choice; all theorems hold true under more general
conditions. The First Information-theoretic Incompleteness Theorem (Chaitin [23]) is:

Let U be a universal Chaitin machine. Then, ZF C, if arithmetically sound,

can prove only finitely many statements of the form “HU (x) > m”.

In fact, there is a constant c > 0 such that ZF C cannot prove the statement “HU (x) >
m” if m > HU (ZF C) + c. So, all true statements “HU (x) > m” (an infinite set) are
unprovable in ZF C. Recognizing high complexity is a difficult task even for ZF C. The
difficulty depends upon the choice of U : some U ’s are worse than others. Raatikainen [66]
has shown that there exists a universal Chaitin machine U so that ZF C, if arithmetically
sound, can prove no statement of the form “HU (x) > 0”. It follows that ZF C, if
arithmetically sound, can prove no (obviously, true) statement of the form “HU (x) > 0”.

Chaitin’s Second Information-theoretic Incompleteness Theorem reads:

Let U be a universal Chaitin machine. If ZF C is arithmetically sound, then

ZF C can determine the value of only finitely many bits of ΩU .

We can explicitly compute a bound on the number of bits of ΩU which ZF C can

determine, but the bound is not computable. For example, Chaitin [28] has constructed
a universal Chaitin machine ULisp and a theory T such that T can determine the value
of at most HULisp (T ) + 15, 328 bits of ΩU .

Can we ‘know’ the (finitely many) bits which ZF C can determine?

For every c.e. and random real α we can construct a universal Chaitin machine U
such that α = ΩU and ZF C is able to determine finitely (but as many as we want) bits
of ΩU . Solovay [75] went into the opposite direction by showing that:

We can effectively construct a universal Chaitin machine USolovay such that

ZF C, if arithmetically sound, cannot determine any single bit of ΩUSolovay .

6
 Chaitin’s Second Information-theoretic Incompleteness Theorem holds true for any
universal Chaitin machine while Solovay constructed a specific machine. A Chaitin ma-
chine for which Peano Arithmetic can prove its universality and ZF C cannot determine
more than the initial block of 1’s of the binary expansion of its halting probability will
be called Solovay machine. Which c.e. and random reals are halting probabilities of
Solovay machines? Calude [10] proved the following result:

Assume that ZF C is arithmetically sound. Then, every c.e. and random real
is the halting probability of a Solovay machine.

For example, if α ∈ (3/4, 7/8) is c.e. and random, then in the worst case ZF C
can determine its first two bits (11), but no more. Assume that ZF C is arithmetically
sound. Then, every c.e. and random real α ∈ (0, 1/2) is the halting probability of a
Solovay machine which cannot determine any single bit of α. No c.e. and random real
α ∈ (1/2, 1) has the above property.

A direct consequence of Solovay’s result is the following constructive form of

information-theoretic incompleteness:

There exists a universal Chaitin machine USolovay so that ZF C, if arith-

metically sound, cannot prove the true statement “the first bit of ΩUSolovay is
0”.

In fact, a more general theorem is true:

For every binary string s = s1 s2 . . . sn we can effectively construct a Solovay

machine USolovay such that the binary expansion of ΩUSolovay has the string
0s1 s2 . . . sn as prefix. Hence, the following statements

“The 0th binary digit of the expansion of ΩUSolovay is 0”,

“The 1st binary digit of the expansion of ΩUSolovay is s1 ”,

“The 2nd binary digit of the expansion of ΩUSolovay is s2 ”,

..
.
“The nth binary digit of the expansion of ΩUSolovay is sn ”,
are true but unprovable in ZF C.

The information-theoretic version of incompleteness produces, in a constructive way,

natural examples in which the axiomatic method is completely powerless. It also shows
that incompleteness is pervasive, not accidental (for a different approach see [16]). This
may change the general view on the axiomatic method, one of the most powerful tools
in mathematics. In Gödel’s own words ([47]):

7
 . . . besides mathematical intuition there exists another (though only probable)
criterion of truth of mathematical axioms, namely their fruitfulness in math-
ematics, and one may add, possibly also in physics . . . The simplest case of
an application of the criterion under discussion arises when some . . . axiom
has number-theoretical consequences verifiable by computation up to any given
integer.

Do these results have any impact on mathematics and/or the philosophy of mathe-
matics? Opinions vary dramatically. H. Weyl described incompleteness in a pessimistic
way, as a constant drain on the enthusiasm of pursuing scientific research; F. Dyson sees
it in an optimistic way, as an insurance policy that science will go on for ever. And, of
course, some would argue that the work of the overwhelming majority of mathematicians
and philosophers has been quite unaffected by the incompleteness results. One thing is
certain: incompleteness has captured the interest of many. Many books and thousands
of technical papers discuss it and and its implications and the March 29 1999 issue of
TIME magazine has included Gödel and Turing in its list of the twenty greatest twenty
scientists and thinkers of the twentieth century.

4 Beyond

Classically, there are two equivalent ways to look at the mathematical notion of proof:
a) as a finite sequence of sentences strictly obeying some axioms and inference rules, b)
as a specific type of computation. Indeed, from a proof given as a sequence of sentences
one can easily construct a machine producing that sequence as the result of some finite
computation and, conversely, giving a machine computing a proof we can just print all
sentences produced during the computation and arrange them in a sequence. A proof
is an explicit sequence of reasoning steps that can be inspected at leisure; in theory, if
followed with care, such a sequence either reveals a gap or mistake, or can convince a
skeptic of its conclusion, in which case the theorem is considered proven.
This equivalence has stimulated the construction of programs which perform like ar-
tificial mathematicians.1 From proving simple theorems of Euclidean geometry to the
proof of the four-color theorem, these “theorem provers” have been very successful. Of
course, this was a good reason for sparking lots of controversies. Artificial mathemati-
cians are far less ingenious and subtle than human mathematicians, but they surpass
their human counterparts by being infinitely more patient and diligent. What about
making errors? Are human mathematicians less prone to errors? This is a difficult
question which requires more attention.
If a conventional proof is replaced by a “quantum computational proof” (or a proof
produced as a result of a molecular experiment), then the conversion from a computation
to a sequence of sentences may be impossible, e.g., due to the size of the computation.
For example, a quantum machine could be used to create some proof that relied on
quantum interference among all the computations going on in superposition. The quan-
tum machine would say “your conjecture is true”, but there will be no way to exhibit
1
Other types of “reasoning” such as medical diagnosis or legal inference have been successfully modeled
and implemented; see, for example, the British National Act which has been encoded in first-order logic
and a machine has been used to uncover its potential logical inconsistencies.

8
all trajectories followed by the quantum machine in reaching that conclusion. In other
words, the quantum machine has the ability to check a proof, but it may fail to reveal
any “trace” of how it did it. Even worse, any attempt to watch the inner working of the
quantum machine (e.g. by “looking” at any information concerning the state of the on
going proof) may compromise for ever the proof itself!
These facts may not affect the essence of mathematical objects and constructions
(which have an autonomous reality quite independent of the physical reality), but they
seem to have an impact of how we learn/understand mathematics (which is thorough
the physical world). Indeed, our glimpses of mathematics seem to be “revealed” through
physical objects, i.e. human brains, silicon computers, quantum Turing machines, etc.,
hence, according to Deutsch [41], they have to obey not only the axioms and the inference
rules of the theory, but the laws of physics as well.
The question of trespassing Turing’s barrier, i.e. the possibility to solve a Turing
undecidable problem, to compute an uncomputable function has been considered by
various authors, for example, [70, 34, 35]. Is there any hope for quantum (or DNA)
computing to challenge the Turing barrier, i.e. to solve an undecidable problem, to
compute an uncomputable function? According to Feynman’s argument (see [45], a paper
reproduced also in [46]) any quantum system can be simulated with arbitrary precision
by a (probabilistic) Turing machine, so the answer seems to be negative. However,
some recent tentative approaches promise a positive answer: for quantum approaches
see [12, 13, 18, 52] and for DNA methods see [19].
Is incompleteness affected? We need more understanding of the quantum world to
be able to answer this question. One step toward a possible answer to this question is
too look at the quantum version of Ω, the number Ωq invented in 1995 by G. Chaitin, K.
Svozil and A. Zeilinger (see [78, 85]; see also [52, 83]). The number Ωq is the probability
amplitude with which a random quantum program halts on a self-delimiting universal
quantum machine (hence, the halting probability of a self-delimiting universal quantum
machine is |Ωq |2 ).2 For computing Ωq only the quantum versions of classical bits in the
domain of the quantum machine are allowed as inputs, so from the computability point
of view Ωq is an Ω, hence all information-theoretic results remain unchanged. However,
if some “quantum machine” would be able to solve the Halting Problem (for classical
Turing machines), then its halting probability will be an α number (as introduced in [4]),
a random, but not c.e. real; the “incompleteness” derived from such a number has not
(yet) been studied.
As is pointed out in [13], even if theoretically one could show that Turing’s barrier
can be trespassed by a quantum machine, the impact on computer technology would be
very, very low. So, when reality is so far way from theory, why are we concerned with the
later? According to Landauer [60] the answer is: Because it is at the very core of science.
. . . Information, numerical or otherwise, is not an abstraction, but it is inevitable tied to
a physical representation. . . . the handling of information is inevitable tied to the physical
universe, its contents and its laws.
2
Things are more complicated as the halt bit of the quantum machine might enter a superposition
state and remain there while other parts of the output state describing the quantum machine continue
to change. Finally, to settle the matter one has to perform a measurement.

9
5 Bibliographical Comments

The list of references is by no means comprehensive and should be used in conjunction

with bibliographies appearing in the cited works. One of the best presentations of Gödel’s
Incompleteness Theorem is [64]. The founders of algorithmic information theory are
Solomonoff [73], Kolmogorov [56] and Chaitin [22]. Chaitin’s monographs [27, 29] deal
with information-theoretic incompleteness. More on these issues can be found in [68,
2, 5, 81, 3, 7]; for critical discussions see [59, 66]. Algorithmic information theory is
presented in [25, 28, 29, 30, 82, 8, 61]. For other interesting discussions on randomness
see [51, 55, 38, 5, 49, 77, 39]. Easy to understand presentations include [6, 24, 20, 11,
9, 21, 32, 31, 69]. Recent literature inspired by Gödel’s incompleteness include [1, 42].
Gödel’s life is discussed in [54, 57, 37, 84, 21]. The literature on quantum computing is
growing at full speed: some references are [48, 85, 19].

Acknowledgment

We thank Greg Chaitin, Fred Kroon, Sergiu Rudeanu, Jerry Seligman and Karl Svozil
for useful comments and criticism.

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