[ExI] Douglas Hofstadter, LLMs and self-referentiality

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] Douglas Hofstadter, LLMs and self-referentiality

 

On Tue, 1 Sept 2026 at 20:51, John Clark via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

>…Gödel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter is one of my all-time favorite books, it and Drexler's Engines Of Creation have done the most in shaping my current worldview

 

 

 

 

 

Same here.  I was in college when EGB was published.  My professors were mentioning it.  I read a little at the time, saw that it was astonishing cool, but didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with it at the time.  I determined to read it once I graduated, which I did.  Twice.

 

 

….

 

 

>…I discussed Scott's post with GLM-5.3 AI, including research into self-reference for LLMs.

It had a lot to say about this.  :)

I ended by asking, " Do you have self-referential capabilities?"

The answer was interesting because, as GLM said, answering requires doing exactly the thing being asked about.

BillK

 

>…GLM-5.3 DeepThink -

>…Honestly: yes and no, and the question itself puts me in an interesting position to answer it — because answering requires doing exactly the thing being asked about.

 

 

 

 

BillK, this response by Deep Think is the most mind-blowing commentary by an AI to date.

 

spike

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