[ExI] very asian gold box?

[Stuart LaForge]

On 2024-12-28 13:32, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote:
> There are many fans of Hofstader's Eternal Golden Braid here as I
> recall.  I noted to a young friend that it is the most letter-perfect
> book I have ever read, as I don't recall seeing a single typo in it.
> He found two, and I found a third, right together on page 404:
> 
> Tortoise: Now whatver has come over you, Achilles?  Well, thank you
> for your outstandig generosity, and I hope you have sweet dreams about
> the strange Golbach Conjecture, and its Variation.  Good night.
> 
> The same sentence has omitted three letters, the e in whatever, the n
> in outstanding, and the d in Goldbach.  It is on page 404.  So e, n, d
> are missing, all in the same sentence.  Are there any computer jockeys
> here who can suggest reasons why Hofstadter would have omitted e, n,
> d?

Could it be a pun of omission? E, n, d spell "end" and that sentence is 
therefore "endless" which is a synonym for eternal as in "Eternal Golden 
Braid".

> Please also, what is the Variation of Goldbach's conjecture?

There are a lot of variations of the Goldbach Conjecture that are 
possible and therefore, I do not know which in particular Hofstader was 
referring to. One variation that I myself came up with is that every 
integer greater than 3 is the arithmetic mean of or, exactly halfway in 
between, at least one pair of prime numbers.

Stuart LaForge