Thursday, 13 March 2008
Introducing my kids to the wonderful world of Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach, and other titles related to self-referential systems.
The classic "Godel, Escher, Bach" shows the genius of the author, not only for noticing that Godel has done in language what Escher has done with visual arts and Bach has done in music, but the author has created fugues and canons out of words in dialogue, whose content comments on the concepts themselves.
In the follow-up work, "Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern", the author introduced it as follows: if GEB is an elaborate fugue on one very complex theme, and MI (The Mind's I) is a collection of many variations on a theme, then perhaps MT is a fantasia employing several themes.
A later volume, "I am a Strange Loop", looks for possible explanations of consciousness by various musings and self-referential case studies.
A related book is Al Seckel's "Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali, & the artists of optical illusion", which the children loved for all variety of visual paradoxes.
Godel, Escher, Bach
A grand exploration of the notions of patterns, logic, thinking, iterations, loops, Artificial Intelligence, computation, mathematics, physics, ... that is related to or revolve around the theme of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, extended into the musical sphere of Bach, and drawings by Escher.
I am a Strange Loop summary
Starting out with the idea of Cone of Consciousness, with atoms and amoebas on the lower end, then plants, various intelligent animals, and ultimately human on the highest level. Then the idea of a growing sense of self and consciousness, as a baby grows up to adulthood.
Exploring various ideas of patterns, feedback, loops, clear simplified explanation and illustration of Godel's theorem.
For patterns and meaning, we have different levels of description: concepts of biology cannot be reduced to the level of physics and particle interactions. Similarly, concepts involving the self are high level ideas that cannot be on low level. The self is able to capture thoughts and perceptions, even the strange loop (a la Godel) that lower form of representation cannot.
Where is the self? When his soulmate wife died, she continues to live on, in memory, in objects that trigger his belief in her presence, and "she continues to think with his brain". Other ideas: Our being influence others through books, teleport via phone and videos. Are we everywhere and in everyone?
Chap 19: Consciousness = thinking.
Consciousness is the dance of symbols inside the cranium. Consciousness is thinking. Cogito ergo sum.
(NB. When we are drugged, we no longer think, and thus lose our consciousness.)
Ch 23. Our will are not free, in that while we may want something, often we cannot change ourselves for the better. (NB. Know what I ought to do but could not do it.)
Our will, quite opposite of being free, is steady and stable. It is this constancy of our non-free will that makes me me and you you.
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Slashdot points to this review of Strang
Written by wjzhu on 2008-06-12 21:41:59
http://tal.forum2.org/hofstadter_interview |
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