One of the most important and fascinating of all computer languages is Lisp (standing for "List Processing"), which was invented by John McCarthy around the time Algol was invented. Douglas Hofstadter More Quotes by Douglas Hofstadter More Quotes From Douglas Hofstadter The entire effort of artificial intelligence is essentially a fight against computers’ rigidity. Douglas Hofstadter computer effort fighting No reference is truly direct — every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is. Douglas Hofstadter schemes direct kind I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast? Douglas Hofstadter truth clever science Reductionism is merciless. Douglas Hofstadter reductionism inspirational Some of us, perhaps all of us, believe that it is legitimate to kill enemy soldiers in a war, as if war were a special circumstance that shrinks the sizes of enemy souls. Douglas Hofstadter soul war believe Perhaps the problem is the seeming need that people have of making black-and-white cutoffs when it comes to certain mysterious phenomena, such as life and consciousness. People seem to want there to be an absolute threshold between the living and the nonliving, and between the thinking and the "merely mechanical," ... But the onward march of science seems to force us ever more clearly into accepting intermediate levels of such properties. Douglas Hofstadter black-and-white acceptance science I don't feel I have the right to snuff the lives of chicken and fish. Douglas Hofstadter snuff fishes chickens The nice thing about having a brain is that one can learn, that ignorance can be supplanted by knowledge, and that small bits of knowledge can gradually pile up into substantial heaps. Douglas Hofstadter nice ignorance brain Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism . ... Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories ... human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon - which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least. Douglas Hofstadter enlightenment perception struggle Enormous numbers of people are taken in, or at least beguiled and fascinated, by what seems to me to be unbelievable hocum, and relatively few are concerned with or thrilled by the astounding-yet true-facts of science, as put forth in the pages of, say, Scientific American. Douglas Hofstadter taken truth science This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't. Douglas Hofstadter sentences No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over... the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth. Douglas Hofstadter space attitude trying What is an "I", and why are such things found (at least so far) only in association with, as poet Russell Edson once wonderfully phrased it, "teetering bulbs of dread and dream" - that is, only in association with certain kinds of gooey lumps encased in hard protective shells mounted atop mobile pedestals that roam the world on pairs of slightly fuzzy, jointed stilts? Douglas Hofstadter shells pedestal dream It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of a task which it is performing and survey what it has done. Douglas Hofstadter surveys tasks done Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not. Douglas Hofstadter real steps sometimes The paraphrase of Gödel's Theorem says that for any record player, there are records which it cannot play because they will cause its indirect self-destruction. Douglas Hofstadter records player self How gullible are you? Is your gullibility located in some "gullibility center" in your brain? Could a neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation. Douglas Hofstadter leaving brain believe The Strange Loop phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchial system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started. Douglas Hofstadter strange levels moving I would like to understand things better, but I don’t want to understand them perfectly. Douglas Hofstadter want We all have heard it claimed that 13 is an 'unlucky number.' Indeed, there are many hotels in America that for this very reason claim not to have a 13th floor, in the sense that there is no button bearing the label '13' in their elevators (I recently stayed in one in New York, in fact). Douglas Hofstadter new-york numbers america
