4 ms·
GEB is not a study book. It's written as a multi-layered musing on various inter-connected subjects. It's also not hard to read and entertaining. I get the feel
by pierrebai 10y ago
GEB is not a study book. It's written as a multi-layered musing on various inter-connected subjects. It's also not hard to read and entertaining. I get the feeling from the anecdote about the AI professor rejecting students based on having read it and your own reaction that people in the field resent it for not being course material? I also sense a sub-text of resentment about the positions and criticisms of the author about various approach to AI. It's clearly an exposition of his philosophical basis for his position. You might disagree with him but that's no reason to be insulting.
- curuinor 10y agoIt's not so much resentment inasmuch all symbolic AI is evaporating in the shadow of the new new connectionist wave (the "new" connectionist wave being the PDP stuff). Why not, for example, see it from Hinton's philosophical point of view (besides that the papers are very boring and dry, of course)? He made a very good defense against Pylyshin and Fodor and a few critiques of Hofstadter _and_ the algorithms are shipping on Google Search and things like that.