6 ms·

An Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter

41 points by msg 18y ago

jsomers 18y ago
I feel a special kind of levity whenever I read something Hofstadter's written, or when I listen to Feynman speak. Is there anyone else who does that?
- DaniFong 18y ago
  Malcom Gladwell and Stephen Pinker are two writers to mold my mind recently.
- anewaccountname 18y ago
  Chomsky and Feynman for me... except with Chomsky it isn't exactly levity.
- LPTS 18y ago
  Definitely. Hofstadter, Jack Kornfeld, VS Ramachandran, Alan Watts (at times) (not to start political debate, but Barack Obama) And for music (what the hell) Phillip Glass, Squarepusher, Tool, Bach, almost any sort of gamelan music, or music with uneven or additive rhythmic structures.
- hugh 18y ago
  Just two days ago I decided to read one of Feynman's papers (the one on the Hellman-Feynman theorem). His style is amazingly readable and almost conversational, even in dense scientific work, and yet it's still sufficiently precise and formal to seem perfectly in place in a journal. I've been trying ever since to figure out how he does it.
- lg 18y ago
  Of philosophers, David Z. Albert and Ted Sider have written popular books that explain difficult problems in a pretty clear and funny way.
LPTS 18y ago
What a crappy interviewer. The first question reveals the interviewer doesn't know Hofstadter from a hole in the ground. Such a shame a great mind like Hofstadter is subjected to these awful questions. Here's an idea. If you haven't read Hofstadter's GEB and I Am a Strange Loop, don't try to interview him about it. Especially don't open with a question that reveals this in the first breath Hofstadter responds with. I love Bill Moyers, don't get me wrong here, but this reminds me a little of Bill Moyers talking to Joseph Campbell. Campbell was so much more evolved in his understanding then Moyers, that Moyers (who is excellent) seemed like a dog trying to understand a card trick. The interviewer seems like that. It's well worth reading anyway, because Hofstadter is so damn brilliant.
- brfox 18y ago
  I've never read GEB or even heard of I Am a Strange Loop. I've heard that reading GEB takes quite a commitment... Can I cheat and just read I Am a Strange Loop? (The original post says that GEB is basically reviewed in the first part of this newer book).
  - LPTS 18y ago
    I recall reading that Hofstadter said (loosely) GEB was taken more as a collection of neat things, than the coherent thesis about identity. I would personally recommend reading I Am A Strange Loop, and then GEB if intrigued. This way, you will interpret GEB according to Hofstader's more explicit formulations of his deeper ideas, instead of in the more shallow way GEB can be interpreted, without following the thread about identity. I think I Am A Strange Loop is classic and cannot say too much about how great Hofstadter is. He gets consciousness. He gets it. And he has good ways of communicating it. One of the most brilliant minds I have read.
    - brfox 18y ago
      Thanks for the opinions. I might give it a shot. It looks like you are from Seattle? Me too, send me an email, I work in biotech, and it looks like you might sort of also?
    - 18y ago
jackchristopher 18y ago
Hofstadter is a usually great. But he takes distasteful shots at AI researchers who disagree with him, here. He embraces protecting animals and other semi-conscious beings, but doesn't extend that sympathy to AIs, or other potentially conscious beings. That's a bioelitist stance; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno-progressivism#Contrasting_stance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno-progressivism#Contrastin... He even celebrates slow developments in computing, as a good thing.
- LPTS 18y ago
  His critique of Kurzweil as exceptionally afraid of dying and that distorting his scientific validity is spot on. Kurzweil is rigid in exactly the same way as a religious person who believes his body literally will live forever. He just identifies his experiential body as information processes instead of flesh, and has a mythic-technical, instead of mythic-poetic, or mythic-conventional, approach to the details of his eternal life. He's a priest, not a scientist, at least when he speaks about singularity. He needs to find a buddhist teacher and an LSD dealer to get over his fear of death. He's going to die, his body is going to rot and his greying, decayed, stinking flesh is going to be churned into worm poop, his memory and personality will dissolve, as the thing that observes all that (an is the same behind my eyes as yours, that you can see by considering your self image for a long time, and then asking "if I'm looking at me, what is doing the looking?") discards the used up vehicle and suits up for the next adventure as a different one of these trippy humans, which will have a different set of ultimately illusory relationships with this fact through waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep, all before the sun supernovas and destroys every single hint of anything he did with his life, all of which is not only going to happen, but already happening because time is an illusory construct perceived by an illusory ego. The sooner he spends 2 or 3 weeks in a psych word processing that after eating a quarter sheet of acid and screaming about it for twelve hours while burning his retinas out staring at the sun and directly perceiving it, the better off and closer to the truth his community will be. This critique of AI was a highlight for me. People who think they can mimic consciousness on computers have more in common with magical thinking then with science because they have absolutely no deep understanding of consciousness.
  - 18y ago

41 points by msg 18y ago

I feel a special kind of levity whenever I read something Hofstadter's written, or when I listen to Feynman speak. Is there anyone else who does that?

DaniFong 18y ago
Malcom Gladwell and Stephen Pinker are two writers to mold my mind recently.
anewaccountname 18y ago
Chomsky and Feynman for me... except with Chomsky it isn't exactly levity.
LPTS 18y ago
Definitely. Hofstadter, Jack Kornfeld, VS Ramachandran, Alan Watts (at times) (not to start political debate, but Barack Obama) And for music (what the hell) Phillip Glass, Squarepusher, Tool, Bach, almost any sort of gamelan music, or music with uneven or additive rhythmic structures.
hugh 18y ago
Just two days ago I decided to read one of Feynman's papers (the one on the Hellman-Feynman theorem). His style is amazingly readable and almost conversational, even in dense scientific work, and yet it's still sufficiently precise and formal to seem perfectly in place in a journal. I've been trying ever since to figure out how he does it.
lg 18y ago
Of philosophers, David Z. Albert and Ted Sider have written popular books that explain difficult problems in a pretty clear and funny way.

LPTS 18y ago

What a crappy interviewer. The first question reveals the interviewer doesn't know Hofstadter from a hole in the ground. Such a shame a great mind like Hofstadter is subjected to these awful questions. Here's an idea. If you haven't read Hofstadter's GEB and I Am a Strange Loop, don't try to interview him about it. Especially don't open with a question that reveals this in the first breath Hofstadter responds with. I love Bill Moyers, don't get me wrong here, but this reminds me a little of Bill Moyers talking to Joseph Campbell. Campbell was so much more evolved in his understanding then Moyers, that Moyers (who is excellent) seemed like a dog trying to understand a card trick. The interviewer seems like that. It's well worth reading anyway, because Hofstadter is so damn brilliant.

brfox 18y ago
I've never read GEB or even heard of I Am a Strange Loop. I've heard that reading GEB takes quite a commitment... Can I cheat and just read I Am a Strange Loop? (The original post says that GEB is basically reviewed in the first part of this newer book).
- LPTS 18y ago
  I recall reading that Hofstadter said (loosely) GEB was taken more as a collection of neat things, than the coherent thesis about identity. I would personally recommend reading I Am A Strange Loop, and then GEB if intrigued. This way, you will interpret GEB according to Hofstader's more explicit formulations of his deeper ideas, instead of in the more shallow way GEB can be interpreted, without following the thread about identity. I think I Am A Strange Loop is classic and cannot say too much about how great Hofstadter is. He gets consciousness. He gets it. And he has good ways of communicating it. One of the most brilliant minds I have read.
  - brfox 18y ago
    Thanks for the opinions. I might give it a shot. It looks like you are from Seattle? Me too, send me an email, I work in biotech, and it looks like you might sort of also?
  - 18y ago

jackchristopher 18y ago

Hofstadter is a usually great. But he takes distasteful shots at AI researchers who disagree with him, here. He embraces protecting animals and other semi-conscious beings, but doesn't extend that sympathy to AIs, or other potentially conscious beings. That's a bioelitist stance; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno-progressivism#Contrasting_stance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno-progressivism#Contrastin... He even celebrates slow developments in computing, as a good thing.

LPTS 18y ago
His critique of Kurzweil as exceptionally afraid of dying and that distorting his scientific validity is spot on. Kurzweil is rigid in exactly the same way as a religious person who believes his body literally will live forever. He just identifies his experiential body as information processes instead of flesh, and has a mythic-technical, instead of mythic-poetic, or mythic-conventional, approach to the details of his eternal life. He's a priest, not a scientist, at least when he speaks about singularity. He needs to find a buddhist teacher and an LSD dealer to get over his fear of death. He's going to die, his body is going to rot and his greying, decayed, stinking flesh is going to be churned into worm poop, his memory and personality will dissolve, as the thing that observes all that (an is the same behind my eyes as yours, that you can see by considering your self image for a long time, and then asking "if I'm looking at me, what is doing the looking?") discards the used up vehicle and suits up for the next adventure as a different one of these trippy humans, which will have a different set of ultimately illusory relationships with this fact through waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep, all before the sun supernovas and destroys every single hint of anything he did with his life, all of which is not only going to happen, but already happening because time is an illusory construct perceived by an illusory ego. The sooner he spends 2 or 3 weeks in a psych word processing that after eating a quarter sheet of acid and screaming about it for twelve hours while burning his retinas out staring at the sun and directly perceiving it, the better off and closer to the truth his community will be. This critique of AI was a highlight for me. People who think they can mimic consciousness on computers have more in common with magical thinking then with science because they have absolutely no deep understanding of consciousness.
- 18y ago