There's also the fact that Hofstadter persistently equates strong AI with grandmaster-level chess-playing, and the entire chapter of nothing but totally unscientific, unfounded, incredibly wrong, biology-free speculation about how the human brain works.
Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
271–280 of 348 posts
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#272“A fun illustration of something,” is pretty much as far as the book goes: it hints at grand unifying patterns, but the pattern it finds is just the abstract notion of self-reference, and then it keeps bringing it up, making a few unnecessary references, showing some pictures, and asking, “Isn’t that cool? Isn’t that weird?” The book is a puzzle. That's it. It's not the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I…
What's the solution?
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#273The author's main points are:
* The dialogs are overlong and obtuse * Some specific metaphors don't click * The author attacks various things which he feels Hofstadter belittles (avant-garde music, Zen)
He may be right about the dialogs, though as others have said perhaps it's better to read the chapters backwards. Or, even, metaphorically like the Crab Canon: dialog, chapter, and then dialog again.
He's clearly projecting his own perspective without thinking about the perspective of others when it comes to the metaphors. This won a Pulitzer, not everyone has a mathematical background and can straight up understand Godel when directly explained.
But it's the third part that is most troubling. These days it's fashionable to take some earlier cultural artefact, and assassinate it on the basis that every point of view is valid, genuine, and can't be criticised. I smell that same pattern in his counter-attacks on "avant-garde social commentary masquerading as music" and Zen. Hofstadter has an opinion on these. A strong, negative opinion. Attacking Hofstadter the way he does to me more smacks of a post-hoc character assassination than intelligent engagement with the material.
As an aside: I read Hofstadter (somewhere) say that he has spent a lot of his life after GEB trying to hammer home that it was about self-reference, self-reference, and nothing but self-reference. I think he even described "I am a Strange Loop" as being GEB but much more direct (I still need to read that one).
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "the proof" As if there can only be one. (And it seems OP is describing the theorem, not a proof)
It's just plain wrong to say that there are more facts in a theory than proofs of facts. Both of these sets are countably infinite. Godel's theorem proves that provable facts are a strict subset of all facts.
>It's just plain wrong to say that there are more facts in a theory than proofs of facts. Both of these sets are countably infinite.
Some infinities are larger than others. This was proved by Georg Cantor, who created set theory.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#275jesus fucking christ, downvote me away from here you ignorant millenials - what the fuck is wrong with you morons?
EDIT: can someone please ban me from ever visiting this site? Who the fuck upvotes 400 points this asinine bullshit?
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#276Though interestingly the beginning of the discussion of 'Zen': > This might seem unfair, so I’ll give a very specific but pervasive instance of this sort of meaningless flavor. Many parts of the book invoke Zen, which is a school of Buddhism that originated in China and has spread to several other Asian countries but, in the Western mind, is usually associated with Japan. (We do, after all, know this school by its Ja…
> seems to miss the fact that Buddhism originated in India and that not only the Japanese word Zen but also Chinese Chán are adaptations of the Sanskrit dhān(a) (meaning originally something like 'concentration' or 'contemplation').
Etymologically this is true, but in the sense of tradition, India doesn't really have a Zen tradition, it really did originate in China. Dhyāna is much more broad and not only part of Buddhism, but also Hinduism and Jainism
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#277The treatment of Godel's theorems in GEB always struck me as gratuitous: It treats a technical result as having great philosophical import. The philosophical content of Godel's theorems is already found in the Liar paradox, "This statement is false." and incompleteness in a grand sweeping sense involving language in its entirety can be found in works as early as the Daoists and the Greeks. Edit: I should say that thi…
In my opinion the most important bit of Gödel's results is Tarski's Undefinability, an essential corollary that is often completely omitted when talking about incompleteness. GEB covers this (on p580 in my copy) and talks a bit about the consequences.
The other important part, of course, is that these results are inescapable.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's just plain wrong to say that there are more facts in a theory than proofs of facts. Both of these sets are countably infinite. Godel's theorem proves that provable facts are a strict subset of all facts.
>It's just plain wrong to say that there are more facts in a theory than proofs of facts. Both of these sets are countably infinite. Some infinities are larger than others. This was proved by Georg Cantor, who created set theory.
And if you read about Cantor you will find he defined a term called 'countably infinite'. No 'countably infinite' set has a higher cardinality than any other.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#279Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#280Soooo, you didn't like a book that challenged you in a way that you did not like. I personally did enjoy it first time around.
It’s a venerated book among a certain stripe of computer scientist and mathematician
That is a bit trite and if I may: a bit disingenuous. I'm neither a comp sci nor a mathematician but I love GEB. It is a classic. I first discovered it by accident at school. It did not change my life as such but I think that DH did have a bearing on the way I think even nowadays.