How AI pioneer Doug Hofstadter wrote Gödel, Escher, Bach
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- Douglas Hofstadter talks about how he came to write his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW
• Gödel, Escher, Bach au...
READ "GÖDEL, ESCHER, BACH"
amzn.to/3pEpetL
LEARN ABOUT OUR TRAINING PROGRAMS FOR INNOVATIVE ENTREPRENEURS
gamethinking.io...
-----------
📚 ABOUT OUR CHANNEL📚
We deconstruct breakout games & apps to help you innovate smarter and find product/market fit. Hosted by Amy Jo Kim - Game Designer & Startup Coach - prev. Rock Band, The Sims, Covet Fashion Happify, Netflix.
Check out our channel here:
/ gamethinkingtv
🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe! 🔔
LEARN MORE ABOUT GAME THINKING
Check out our rapid innovation programs for product leaders.👍
www.gamethinki...
Join our free online community 📣 and get in on exclusive free events at
www.gamethinki...
Read our Game Thinking book 📘 at
gamethinking.i...
FIND US AT 👇
gamethinking.io/
GET IN TOUCH 👍
support@gamethinking.io
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL 📱
Get updates or reach out to Get updates on our Social Media Profiles!
/ amyjokim
/ amyjokim
/ amyjokim
Game Thinking TV
![MISSING: SLIM SHADY [Expanded Mourner’s Edition Trailer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xh8qgHrOO1g/mqdefault.jpg)
Wow, this is an amazing interview. 100% signal, 0% noise, and explained with shocking clarity. Thanks a lot!
So glad you enjoyed the interview! We worked hard to edit it down to 100% signal - you noticed, and that means a lot ❤️
What does that mean 100% signal and no noise? Can you explain this please? Thank you!
@@nicolasolton
signal = useful information
noise = distracting, irrelevant stuff
I guess Peter means that this talk was straight to the point
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Hofstadter at a lecture series he delivered at Butler University some time ago. I subsequently attended a couple of his poetry readings and ended up being invited to his house for the anniversary of GEB in 1999. Not only is his thinking clear and precise, so are his presentations. Hope he continues sharing his thoughts and wisdom for many more years.
What a great story! Thanks for sharing, so glad you enjoyed this❤️❤️
GEB was one of those epic books from my undergrad days that influenced me for the rest of my life. I have re-read it every year for the past 40 years. Thank you Douglas.
We feel the same & are SO grateful to have read this book & gotton to know Doug❤️
From your name I guess you like Feynman?😊
@@robscovell5951or Sergei Shoigu? What makes you say Feynman?
@@nicolasolton Back in the 80s people who were into Hofstadter were often also into Feynman, and Feynman was famously obsessed with getting to Kyzyl, Tuva, despite it being the time of the cold war.
It's amazing that this interview even exists, one thousand thanks to you people!!
So glad you enjoyed it! Please share with your network to spread the love
I first read GEB at age 14. and again at 15, 16, 17,18, ad infinitum. It has been on my bookshelf forever and I still find it a fabulous read almost 50 years later!
that's amazing! thanks for sharing your experience!
Is it written for teenagers in mind? Thanks.
@@nicolasolton the answer is both yes and no.
Is the teenager precocious?
Are they interested in art and science, math and philosophy, cognition and theories of mind? Do they enjoy challenging word play and logic puzzles? Are they intrigued by patterns, fractals, self-similarity, the emergence of complex behaviors from apparently simple systems?
If so - then hell yes.
If not - then maybe just ask them if they'd enjoy it. I'm also sure you can find the odd chapter online somewhere - so they have an opportunity to preview it.
I was, admittedly, weird - and I still am in many ways. But I'm not (and was not) unique or special. Just different enough to embrace the absolutely mind expanding cognitive trip that GEB delivered.
Love Doug. I had the pleasure of having him as a teacher for three different classes when I went to school in Bloomington, spanning typography, history and philosophy of science, and geometry. He's a true polymath and a brilliant teacher: very intense and intellectually demanding, but never harsh or one to waste your time with busywork.
I've had a lot of fantastic professors over the years, but Doug is really his own breed, and incredibly generous. He would always go out of his way to lend myself and other students his personal copies of books when he could, and even designed an ambigram for a student association where I was a director as a favor. He's also quite amusing even when being critical: he had trouble finding anything wrong with a grid-based font I'd designed, so he honed in on its kerning and just said wryly "That's cute" 💀
It's great to finally hear him talk more about his own story, so thank you for making this interview happen 🙏
Thank you for sharing your story - so meaningful & touching to hear about your experiences with Doug.❤️
I stumbled onto GEB back in the earl 80s when I was about 30 years old.
Whenever someone asks what is my personal most influential book GEB is always my answer. The whole of everything started to make much more sense... I wound up plunging myself back into math and technology, and it wound up altering my career path until retirement.
WOW - that's great to hear!
What career path did you choose?
@@nicolasolton I got back working in an dental equipment engineering group and eventually got into primarily software. I spent the last 30 years before retirement primarily doing database development and administration (SQL became my native language) for global corporation.
Doug, this conversation was a refreshing discovery after many years of reading the book and spending time on Russell, WIttgenstein, Feynman and Penrose, trying to get a clear definition of consciousness. i wasn't very successful until I went to Japan and spent 12 years studying Zen Buddhism and playing their temple music. It dawned on me that when you are talking about Godel, Bach and music, you are describing a Zen oriented state of mind, different from wat we know to be the case in the West, or at least that's what it sounds If you translated it all to Japanese, you would have a new audience..! great work.
Thanks so much!
My PhD supervisor gave me a copy of GEB back in the early 80s. I tried several times to get into it, but found it completely impenetrable. After this video, I’m tempted to have another go.
Really? What is so inaccessible about it
Wow - that's a huge compliment, I'm so glad you got re-inspired! ❤️❤️❤️
Most influential book I read in my life.
Same.
such an an amazing book, recommended to me by a RUclipsr following one of my comments about 3 years ago. I unfortunately lack the brain to appreciate it fully, but with perseverance I can nibble at its phenomenal amount of knowledge and enrich my understanding of both art and science. I am so glad to hear more about its author as it might allow me to delve deeper into his ideas. Thank you for your presentation and I have subscribed to your channel to hear more.
So glad you enjoyed our interview! Look forward to having you in the tribe :-)
What a surprise to find such an amazing interview of one of my favorite authors. Thank you so much! I’ve read GEB several times, and each time I’ve discovered more and more of the cryptographic secrets hidden in the text; messages hidden in the first letters of each sentence, hidden palindrome syntax, text written in augmentation and inversion, and the fact that the entire book is an endlessly upward modulating self-referential exposition contained within the fugue, within the fugue, etc. AND explained Gödel in a way that anyone could understand. Amazing! My deepest thanks and respect!
You're welcome! We're thrilled that you enjoyed this interview.
Could you point out some of the secrets hidden in the text? Thanks!
@@nicolasolton It’s been many years since I’ve read GEB, so I can’t give you specifics without looking over the book again. But I can tell you this much; every time you find that his wording is somehow slightly unnatural or his choice of words seems a little bit unusual, whenever a word is capitalized for no apparent reason, or when the order of the words is a bit strange, you will almost always find that he did it in order to produce a hidden message. Sometimes, taking the first word of every paragraph creates another sentence, sometimes taking the first letter of every word in a sentence creates a new word. Some are palindromes or palindromic sentences. The messages are always somehow related to the topic at hand, so for example, when he’s discussing DNA, the character names have the same initials as the four nucleotides used in DNA and they relate to each other in a way similar to his discussion of nucleotides. When he discusses self reference, the text will be self-referential. When he discusses the fugue, the text obviously is also a fugue… but it also contains the other composing techniques he mentioned, including augmentation and inversion. The only specific “treat“ that I can think of offhand, is that the entire book begins with the words “Author:“. Why is that? It’s because the end of the book, the “Author” joins the discussion among the other characters of an Endlessy Rising Canon. The book itself actually becomes the continuation of that conversation, which ends with the very conversation that it’s a part of, ad infinitum, making the book itself an Endlessly Rising Canon!
For me it is his later work I Am A Strange Loop that grabbed me and I am so thankful that he was able to write of such complex ideas in a way understandable by a mere mortal such as myself.
So interesting... thanks for sharing your experience!
GEB is a fabulous book. One of my all time favorites. The way Doug has been able to discuss so many aspects and still intertwine in a beautiful way is such legendary writing. I read it so many years back but I still relate to the concept of strange loops in everyday life. Thanks for sharing this.
Thanks for your comment! I felt the same way💖
So great to see this hero on video. GEB was the most formative book I read as a teen in the late 80s, early 90s.
WOW - that's so cool to hear, so glad you enjoyed seeing Doug ❤️
What do you remember most about GEB? Anything in particular stick with you?
@@GameThinkingTV No one thing stands out of GEB at this distance, but I wrote my college application essay about the book, and then went on at an Ivy League school to study history of science, with a focus on the history of logic, which meant taking courses in the math, philosophy, and computer science departments, including a course entirely devoted to Gödel’s theorem.
I also devoured Metamagical Themas, and one thing that stood out there was (if I am not mistaken) Doug’s coinage of the term “meme,” which now has taken on a life of its own.
1980. I was with my Dad and we were at a junk yard and I found the book Gödel, Escher, Bach , my Dad was happy that i was reading. I loved the diagrams and ideas, my Dad keep it and here is a pen. Figure out what they say, use your pin as working on a car. well, I read the book back and forth that I read all his boos. 2016. I worked in jeffersonville indiana and visited Indianas univeririty. I saw mr. Hofstadter. He said, hello. Priceless. 😅😅
What a great story! Thanks for sharing ❤️
It's definitely one of my favorite books and I enjoyed it so much reading it back then. Great interview with Douglas Hofstadter. Woohoo -> he is one of those rare Americans, who get the pronounciation of 'Bach' right!
Glad you enjoyed our interview! Doug is a gem 💎
Have you read GEB? Or wanted to? I'm thinking about making a follow-up video for those who want to read Gödel, Escher, Bach, but find it's length and density daunting. Let me know if you'd be interested in seeing that.
love to see this👍🏽
When are you going to do it ?
@@ranchoplays9946 I should be able to get to it this summer.
@@scottkim8818 is it goin to be free on youtube....
One more request i have ... can u please convince hofstadter to do more interviews..it'd be very great..thank you
The translation of numbers into symbols and the use of logical symbols with set theory cannot be simplified enough for some of us to really grasp 2:52
My brain kept aching like a stomach asked to eat 10 more slices of delicious cake.
Love this! I only just now read GEB in the past year, over the age of 40. Given my young dalliances in mathematics and exploring books of the works of Escher and Roger Dean, it’s rather surprising to me I missed out for so long. And it really was a missing out. I think GEB at a younger age would have inspired my career in a different direction. But now that I’m an astrobioogist and popularizer of science, I feel like the time is also right for it to impact my next steps and my own writing and thinking. Many thanks for providing this interview and Hoftstadter’s story on creating GEB.
WOW - what a great story! Thanks for sharing.
WOW! Thank you for this interview. And Douglas, THANK YOU. GEB is one of my two favorite books ever. I refer to it often some 40 years after reading it. I had known D. Hofstadter from his fabulously smart (and endlessly recursive) Hofstadter's Law that says: "Everything takes longer than expected, even if you take Hofstadter's Law into account". I also read your other gem: "The Minds I"
Thanks for the appreciate - we'll pass along your comments to Doug that'll mean a lot.
This book was really influential on me and my friends in our undergrad years; great to hear his thoughts in the age of LLMs.
So glad you enjoyed our interview!
Wow! Just stumbled upon this. I read and was fascinated by GEB in the 80s (heard of it from Martin Gardner of course), and have sometimes wondered what Hofstadter would think of today's generation of AI in the ChatGPT and forward era. Didn't know he was still with us - great video. Am subscribing.
Awesome! Glad you enjoyed the conversation. Doug is indeed alive & well, & a longtime friend. We look forward to having you as a subscriber.
Great explanation by Douglas Hofstadter. Thank you for bringing it to us.
You're welcome! So glad you enjoyed this - we had a blast creating it.
Amazing. Very influential book for me, aged 14. I don't quite agree with the end: the consciousness that the "thinking" Hofstadter observes in ChatGPT is the consciousness of its creators, not of "ChatGPT" (whatever that is) itself. But the issues are at least on the table thanks to his work.
Thanks for sharing - glad you found Doug's work as powerful as we did.
I loved this book. Took a while and much concentration to finish it. Surprised it won the National Book award as what editor could understand its symbolic logic?
LOL I guess he wow-ed 'em
the choice of our words
defines what we will see in
the choice of our words
"Ideas
My take (from GEB) is that consciousness is an emergent property of particularly complex systems - which has always made more sense to me (especially as fMRI research showed we become aware of our conscious decisions sometime after the decision is actually made).
And you really should read GEB. Awesome book, even if (and especially if) you disagree with its premises
When you move, you do it precisely, without stumble onto things that surrender you in a quick and efficient way and you do not even think about it. Your central nervous system also generates in a similar way that elusive thing that we call consciousness
@@tonypcoyle so awareness and consciousness are 2 different things? How would define them?
@@carlosenriquegonzalez-isla6523 also we have reflexes that make us move before the nerve signal even reaches the brain. Say lifting our foot when stepping on glass. Would you say there's consciousness involved in that process? If so, what part is conscious, the foot registering the cut, the spinal cord sending the signal back to lift the foot, both, other?
Hmmm.... not sure what to say.
Very enjoyable interview. Thank you.
Our pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it. Anything in particular catch your attention?
Wonderful interview of my favorite author and thinker. I would LOVE to hear a follow up about his 2nd greatest book, Metamagical Themas. This is a much more readable collection of ideas. His "Person paper on purity in language" is the most clever satire I have ever read, and still very current.😊
Thanks for your feedback, we'll consider doing a followup!
I was trying to figure out who “Scott” was so started searching and it’s Scott Kim who started Game Thinking which I recognize is the name of this channel.
Aha! We should make that clearer in the video, thanks for your feedback.
This book had a deep inpact on me.
Same. Deep & lasting impact.
Just got GEB!
Wow - let us know what you think of it, and what catches your interest once you've dug in
I read the book when it first came out. As a Chem Engineer, I found it fascinating, but sadly years later, I gave my copy to a Comp Sci friend. I wish I had my original copy, with my notes in the margins.
That would be AMAZING
…I read GEB, twice, and also bought about 13 or so copies to give to friends. I have a feeling that it didn’t have much impact on them, never got a response, as far as I can remember, it was a long time ago. GEB is my all-time favorite book.
One time, it must have been in the late 1980s, I wanted to thank Douglas Hofstadter. I found his email address (using “finger”, at the time - that was an Internet feature). Because Mr. Hofstadter also like to think about the translation, I took an old Wilhelm Bush poem, and translated it from German to English, rhymes and all and emailed it to Doug. I received his reply, but it was not very favorable. On second thought I had chosen a small poem that could be considered anti-Semitic. That was outside of my intention :-) end of story.
What an intriguing story - so glad you enyoyed the book, we did too.
I'd like to read Professor Gebstadter's reportedly similar book (mentioned in the bibliography). I'd probably need to live on an alternate-history Earth to find a copy, however. In seriousness, thanks for sharing this. I also very much enjoyed Le Ton Beau de Marot in which he discusses (among other things) the writing of GEB and the translation of GEB into other languages.
LOL
I’ve owned this book since 1987 (last year at school). I still haven’t finished reading it. I make regular attempts but most often get bogged down in the ps and qs. I try to follow along with each axiom and theory but eventually my brain goes “ping” and tells me to walk away.
I write this not as a critique of the work, more of my ADHD and focus issues. I’ll know a drug or therapy works for me when I finally finish reading this important work.
good test, I guess. I have first met the book when I was 73, so have a lot to absorb and comprehend before I complete my reading of it, when my brain wants to shut down!
LOL love this :-)
Perfect :-)
Thank you for this video
Our pleasure! So glad you like it.
Where's Josha Bach?
Descendent of the great, alive and doing interviews, and deeply versed in these topics.
Though in my experience you have to slow the video if you want to follow Josha.
LOL
I often quote Hofstadter's Law: Things take longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
LOL good one :-)
GEB is still in my top 3 favorite books.
For us too - a timeless classic. Sounds like you are a kindred spirit.
Which ones are the other two? Always looking for new things to read
Is the Scott Kim you mention in the introduction the graphic artist of "Inversions"?
DING! you are correct - Scott Kim & his partner Amy Jo Kim run this channel. Great to have you here! How do you know Scott & his work?
@@GameThinkingTV I don't recall for sure but i do have a copy of Inversions and love it. It has been many a year since i read GEB so maybe he was mentioned there and i simply forgot? On a side note i have a private theory that Christopher Nolan read GEB and based Inception (2010) on the Little Harmonic Labyrinth dialogue.
Wonderful book
Agreed!
Thanks!
Thank you so much! Appreciate it.
If your Dad is a nobel prize winner who could critique your work……Having said that currently there is a pseudo scientific cottage industry surrounding “sentience” of machines.
It's such a tangled & tricky topic... thanks for your comment.
@@GameThinkingTV thanks for teh cool interview :-)
I tried to read that book but it was way over my head. At the same time I was founding a software company with a guy (Max) overseas in Belarus. We needed a name for the company so I suggested Godel Technologies. He loved the idea so it stuck. A year later I split off and did my own thing and he took a new partner on (David) in Manchester. He kept it for a couple of years and then a couple of gangsters from Manchester did a hostile takeover (according to him) of the company. Around the same time the other partner committed suicide (according to him). It's now a massive corporation with offices all over Europe. It's weird to see how big it has grown and even stranger seeing that they're still using the logo we designed back in 2001.
WOW - what a crazy story!
Can we pls get this book on audible pls
Oooo that would be amazing!
I read it when I was 13. Was my only book for about a year or so. Ruined my childhood since everyone else was into children’s stuff like soccer and … I don’t know what they did actually, because I was at home reading, and at the library reading. The only kid at the library. I was the strange, “dumb” one. In hindsight, 40 years later, I think I should have do kids stuff instead of reading.
Ah well... it's never too late to have a happy childhood. Hope you get a chance to go play some soccer...
My father used to escape clases when he was a kid and go to the library to read. He read all his life and he was a very wise, intelligent, empathic human being. He never kick a fooball but he can talk to you about almost everything that is human.
Atoms are reactive with "discreet levels" which hold for a while, information about local environment and electromagnetic fields.
DNA holds digital code in base 64.
How do kilobytes of digital information arise as whole clusters of bits from random processes, which are incapable of creating "meaningful sequences which refer outside of and with a random connection to" what is outside of that code itself?
thanks for your comment, thought-provoking
Isomorphism.
Did Russell acknowledge Godel's refutation?
Not sure...
Then Alice fell down the rabbit hole never to return on that strange loop.
Exactly🐇🐇🐇
I do think that a self referential loop accounts for the core of consciousness and is what makes it seem strange to us. What is odd is that after all these decades, that hasn't cashed out in a generally accepted view of the mechanisms of consciousness.
Hmmmm... interesting. Hard nut to crack.
But there is no consciousness if there is no human interlocutor. There is only chat after there is a question. Right?
I guess... we will all find out.
I think there is a vast chasm between ideas and thinking and consciousness. We self-referential beings perceive the ideas because we are story telling animals. We will find meaning in almost anything if given a context. Thinking, as a self-induced form of logic is actually much more natural for a computer system, but the jump to consciousness does not follow. That requires not only self-reference, but self-awareness, and there is NO evidence for that.
So interesting... thanks for sharing
Animal Hardware is a great title
Love it!
My brain is an ant colony. I have no free will. Life is meaningless. Thank you Doug!
LOL thanks for sharing your experience!
It was interesting hearing how the books came about, but the final comments about AI demonstrate a complete lack of understanding. AI on current technology can never have anything like conscious awareness, simply because the architecture is based on encoding, and that precludes any meaning attaching to the data until it is re-translated.
Thanks for sharing👍🏽
I lean towards this view of AI too. It seems to me that pareidolia/apophenia plays a role in the minds of humans viewing the more abstract constructions of AI, i.e. seeing meaning where there wasn't any inherent meaning, like seeing castles in the clouds in the sky. Most people would say the clouds are not conscious of the castles we humans can see there...but obviously pareidolia/apophenia can be extremely useful.
Who is the narrator?
Amy Jo Kim - co-founder of Game Thinking, & longtime friend of Doug
How can the inanimate 'do' the things they do?
Not sure.. that's a topic for a followup conversation
Goedel is pronounced “girdle”
Thanks
@@davidtrindle6473 Sort of, and a bit difficult for English first language folks like me. I think of it as "gerdl", but de-emphasize this if speaking in context of those less familiar.
You would have to apply a British accent to “girdle” to make it sound like “Goedel.” There is no “r” sound.
For every false that becomes the uncle of GT a true can be created with a new Godel coding. So blocking the theorem.
ummmm what?
@14:30 this is delusional. I loved GEB. But you cannot seriously say a meaning that *_you_* infer has anything to do with a computational system emitting strings or sounds or anything. It is you, Doug, who finds the meaning in a chat-GPT or similar system. The entire geek world of AI hype is just that, a lot of hype, and a lot of hope for immortality in silicon, which I would guess is also delusional, although I'd have absolutely no clue. But it is based on the prejudice of materialism, which Kurt Gödel, for one, did not accept.
Interesting... thanks for sharing your thought-provoking POV
Russel's paradox is a meaningless man made sentence without any worldly, real value. You can make up nonsense sentences at infinitum. Godel used it to show the incompleteness in math. What he ended up is hardly surprising. The result is interpreted incorrectly. It really showed that if you use logic on a nonsense man made sentence your logic will tell you that it can't handle it. 😂
LOL
If it doesn't it does ...
Ah yes, the soul has revealed itself once again.
The only true paradox.
Hmmm...
the book was gibberish
Hmmm.... then why are you here, commenting?