An Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter, following ''I am a Strange Loop''

		Lucia writes in reply to Jack: Asinine No, I don't think I am. I didn't mean anything about his intellect, DRH is smart and I'm complaining about this book (that's what I meant here by 'his work') which is just a reenactment of truly groundbreaking work by others, put out like 'Conscience for dummies' in slow, painful, inaccurate metaphores. Nothing he says by himself is revolutionary, the book is a best seller because it presents fascinating subjects like Chaos theory, recursion and G?del's work about undecidability and uncompleteness, all three fields truly revolutionary stuff, in a way that appeals to someone who has never pondered these subjects. English is not my mother tongue so I may not have conveyed exactly what I wanted to say but basically it's quite obvious to me he's not doing any groundbreaking or revolutionary work here. G?del and others are to credit (and indeed he gives credit where credit is due). Lastly, you've got to be kidding me if you think DRH is 'one of the finest intellects of the last 100 years' unless of course your definition of 'one of the finest' is 'anyone who researches something and writes a hefty tome about subjects 40 years old', or your definition of '100 years' could be shorter than mine.
		[324] Posted on Friday, 13 June 2008 at 21:47 GMT [Reply to this] [Permalink]

		tom123b writes in reply to Lucia: Asinine His idea of ''strange loop'' is original. What a lot of readers seem not to have realized is the ''strangeness'' comes from the idea of downward causality, when the apparent cause-and-effect relationship in a system is flipped upside-down. Hofstadter is the first to take this idea from Godel's Incomplete Theorem and apply it to understanding consciousness. (see pg. 169-170 in the book.)
		[360] Posted on Saturday, 24 January 2009 at 0:06 GMT [Reply to this] [Permalink]