8 Comments

1. Nicholas Gruen

   August 25, 2005

   Correction, the article is pretty easy to read - it's an interview so it can't be too hard. Godel's proof is however explained (I guess they'd say 'motivated' in a maths class) and that takes a bit of concentration. But its a great article - I reckon.

2. meika

   August 25, 2005

   i've read it a couple a months ago, I guess I must be one of the jazzier ones, of course, just because you discover something (lets call it 'x') doesn't mean your biases/preference in a bounded ir/rational world will be right everywhere (x-aleph).

   Even g

3. meika

   August 25, 2005

   its in her genes, she can't help it

4. Gummo Trotsky

   August 25, 2005

   Here's a follow-up interview, also at Edge, also on Godel:

   http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/vhd05/vhd05_index.html

5. Gummo Trotsky

   August 25, 2005

   Sorry, it's not an interview. It's a hatchet job - but a first rate one for all that.

6. meika

   August 26, 2005

   thanks gummo

7. meika

   October 29, 2013

   The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, thinks we've lost sight of what artificial intelligence really means. His stubborn quest to replicate the human mind.

8. john r walker

   October 29, 2013

   Both interviews are wonderfully clear. A favorite bit of Hofstadter

   Moreover, Gödel's construction revealed in a crystal-clear way that the line between "direct" and "indirect" self-reference (indeed, between direct and indirect reference, and that's even more important!) is completely blurry, because his construction pinpoints the essential role played by isomorphism (another name for coding) in the establishment of reference and meaning. Gödel's work is, to me, the most beautiful possible demonstration of how meaning emerges from and only from isomorphism, and of how any notion of "direct" meaning (i.e., codeless meaning) is incoherent. In brief, it shows that semantics is an emergent quality of complex syntax, which harks back to my earlier remark in the Post Scriptum to Chapter 1, namely: "Content is fancy form."