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It's a good read, but you have to be careful with it, because it can take up a lot of your time and you'll quickly run into diminishing returns. Hofstadter is s
by presidentender 13y ago
It's a good read, but you have to be careful with it, because it can take up a lot of your time and you'll quickly run into diminishing returns. Hofstadter is smarter than I am, and I know he's smarter than I am, so I'm never sure whether I've understood anything properly. It's a perfectly laid Dunning-Kruger trap, and it ensnares probably too much of my processor time when I fall into it.
- jonnathanson 13y agoThe problem with reading Hofstadter is that, because he's so brilliant and so lucid, you'll often find yourself readily him uncritically: thoroughly convinced by anything he's saying, and simply absorbing it all. Some of his books, the aforementioned in particular, are works of insight and genius. Others, such as his recent book on metaphor-as-thought, are speculative steps onto a bit thinner ice. (Note: I realize Hofstadter and his colleagues have spent decades exploring metaphor-based AI, and that there might be something quite real to it -- but he doesn't make a convincing case for the sufficiency of this hypothesis, though he insists it's there).