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

		Beepoh writes in reply to Dani Blance: Totally unsatisfying! You're right, there is room for speculation and it is an important part of the process. I suppose what I do find frustrating though is the fact that these kind of debates are 'speculation heavy'. Moreover, I'm really not sure that this speculation is getting us anywhere right now. I'm not diminishing the importance of the hard problem either. The hard problem is ultimately the nut that we all want to see cracked. But remember, the distinction between the hard problem and the easy problem is a coined-in concept which may or may not turn out to be helpful in the end, a kind of Cartesian divide in disguise. At this point there is really no reason to believe that the 'easy' problem is simpler to solve than the hard problem. And who knows, maybe on the way to solving the easy problem we will find clues on how to solve the hard one. I think this is our best shot at this, and I also believe that this is exactly what DRH is doing in the lab when he's not writing books about Chopin's soul-shards.
		[332] Posted on Monday, 16 June 2008 at 9:57 GMT [Reply to this] [Permalink]