[extropy-chat] i am a strange loop

[Lee Corbin]

Rafal:  Thanks for the terrific review!

Lee

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rafal Smigrodzki" <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 1:17 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] i am a strange loop


> 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
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