The well rounded weirdo

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by MLipton:
Douglas Hofstadter

Ouch. Ouch. Don't remind me.

 

[Ken Schramm]

I believe areas of fundamental mystery exist for which science can never provide useful answers.

Irreducible stupidity.

 

[Kay Bixler]

I know it's probably a pointless exercise, but would one of you science guys ever consider writing a letter to Wines and Vines pointing out the problems with some of Smith's more careless statements?

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by MLipton:
Douglas Hofstadter

Ouch. Ouch. Don't remind me.

I would readily defer to mathematicians who told me that it taught me incorrectly, but that book taught me to understand Godel's theorem, while most of my colleagues in English lit. thought it was tantamount to Epimenodes' paradox. The Escher and Bach parts were less interesting, though I did learn of the existence of The Musical Offering from the book and I still love that piece.

 

[Yule Kim]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by MLipton:
Douglas Hofstadter

Ouch. Ouch. Don't remind me.

I would readily defer to mathematicians who told me that it taught me incorrectly, but that book taught me to understand Godel's theorem, while most of my colleagues in English lit. thought it was tantamount to Epimenodes' paradox. The Escher and Bach parts were less interesting, though I did learn of the existence of The Musical Offering from the book and I still love that piece.

Godel's Proof by Ernest Nagel also provides a good explanation of incompleteness.

 

[Ian Fitzsimmons]

I read the last Clark piece that was posted here the whole way through; based on that experience, I'm leaving this one alone.