Posted by Pat C. Hunt on March 20, 1999 at 16:38:19:
In Reply to: godel escher bach posted by Pat C. Hunt on March 16, 1999 at 11:44:28:
:I have revised my opinion of Hofstadter's Godel,Escher,Bach. It's not a put-on. I think he really means it. The book strikes me as a physical representation of cyberspace, the Internet: digressive, vaired, simple, complex, derivative, funny, banal, but, mostly, STUFFED.
Too much effort spent making sophistry sound principled.
Consider if the following cannot be said to fit the pattern of thought
established by Hofstadter.
I cite the 20th century philospher, H. Youngman, who posited new approaches to the understanding
of space and motion. Take Youngman's example of space as defined by a personal experience.
He describes a visit to a rural college town and his experience with the room he rented at the one local hotel.
He discovered that the room was so small that when he put the key in the door he broke the window.
Now of course we know that this is not possible in any real sense yet we accept the concept of this space as described
by Youngman for the power it has to make us laugh. For that moment, the impossible size of the room is possible indeed,
and it proves that space is relative in size to the need that it fills, and that the need that it fills
is inversely proportional to the space it occupies. Maybe.
Then we have Youngman's ideas on the laws of motion. He describes his experience in a restaurant. When the Maitre'd asks him
where he would like to sit, he replies that he wants to be seated near a waiter.
Again we recognize the impossibility of this request. If it could be met it would mean that the waiter is stationary and therefore
not moving and serving and waiting on his appointed tables as he should. This of course means that he is a waister that would not be
desired by any diner. If on the other hand the waiter is a superior performer, then he is constantly on the move attending to the nees
of the diners in his purview. This desirable motion, however, would make it very unlikely that Mr. Youngman's request could be fulfilled
as the waiter he wants is not near the empty table that will be his place to eat and be served.
Of course, all of the above complies with the Hunt Theory of Drift, which is the study of ideas in motion that one may or may not get.