Quotes by Douglas R. Hofstadter

“People enjoy inventing slogans which violate basic arithmetic but which illustrate deeper truths, such as 1 and 1 make 1 (for lovers), or 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 (the Trinity). You can easily pick...”

“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. ”

“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.”

“I am a lifelong lover of formcontent interplay, and this book is no exception. As with several of my previous books, I have had the chance to typeset it down to the finest level of detail, and my q...”

“Saying that studying the brain is limited to the study of physical entities would be like saying that literary criticism must focus on paper and bookbinding, ink and its chemistry, page sizes and m...”

“No, no - I think about thinking”

“And one of my firmest conclusions is that we always think by seeking and drawing parallels to things we know from our past, and that we therefore communicate best when we exploit examples, analogie...”

“Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law”

“It now becomes clear that consistency is not a property of a formal system per se, but depends on the interpretation which is proposed for it. By the same token, inconsistency is not an intrinsic p...”

“A term meant to convey a person's inability to make sense of the numbers that run their lives.”

“We don't want to focus on the trees (or their leaves) at the expense of the forest.”

“People enjoy inventing slogans which violate basic arithmetic but which illustrate “deeper” truths, such as “1 and 1 make 1” (for lovers), or “1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1” (the Trinity). You can easil...”

“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.”

“I am a lifelong lover of form–content interplay, and this book is no exception. As with several of my previous books, I have had the chance to typeset it down to the finest level of detail, and my ...”

“It now becomes clear that consistency is not a property of a formal system per se, but depends on the interpretation which is proposed for it. By the same token, inconsistency is not an intrinsic p...”