[extropy-chat] i am a strange loop

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

Spike wrote:
> >
> > I noticed Hofstadter has a new book called I Am a Strange Loop.  Anyone read
> > it?

### I did. A bit of a disappointment. A nice explanation of Godel's
incompleteness theorem but otherwise hardly anything new for me.
Marred by Hofstadster's persistent claim that the self is an
"illusion" - but an "indispensable illusion", "necessary for
survival", and an illusion with great predictive power. This is a
quite bizarre terminology - after all, an illusion is usually a false
sensory perception, which is not conducive to survival, and does not
increase predictive power. The way I see it, for the most part that
perception which is indispensable for survival and does so through
allowing predictions, is the truth, or something reasonably close to
it. But I agree with the main thrust of the book, that level-crossing
self-reference is the essential part of the self.

Additional annoyances include paeans to compassion, occasional bits of
leftist politics, very poor treatment of the "inverted spectrum"
problem in the analysis of qualia, too much personal reminiscing, and
general goody-two-shoes-ness.

If you ever followed a recrudescence of the identity thread on this
list from start to end, you may have little to learn from the book.
Otherwise, it's a passable introductory text to the meaning of
(conscious) life.

Rafal