Godel, Escher, Bach

Some thoughts and questions while reading the book:

Douglas Hofstadter writes in Godel, Escher, Bach, "Do words and thoughts follow formal rules, or do they not? That problem is the problem of the book." That also seems to be the very crux of a working AI system - getting words, numbers, and algorithms to follow rules.

GEB writes that, "Mathematicians (and more recently linguists, philosophers, and some others) are the only users of formal systems, and they invariably have an interpretation in mind for the formal systems which they use and publish." That "some others" were clearly AI programmers in hindsight.

Did Godel, Escher, Bach predict blockchain in a way? It talks about steps to a formal system being linked in an ironclad way - just as blockchain establishes ownership in an ironclad way. Does this mean that blockchain was a precursor to AI or did they develop in parallel?

Did the book predict AI? It writes about written symbols being translated to algorithms of typographical rules including all the Internet and the very rules of physics. Are AI hallucinations inclusions of non-theorems in the AI system? Is that how we get black founding fathers? Is DEI itself a non-theorem?

Enjoying the book but it is challenging.

Godel, Escher, Bach

Just started the book Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. A book which has long sat on my books to read pile but honestly I was a bit intimidated by it.

 GEB is nominally a book about a mathematician, an artist, and a musician but as the author writes in the 20-year anniversary edition, "In a word GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter." Or to the point, "I have tried to weave an Eternal Golden Braid out of these three strands: Godel, Escher, Bach."

The book is structured in an unusual way: as counterpoint between Dialogues and Chapters. Math is hard enough but this structure tends to lessen the burden. I'm resigned to not fully understanding the math in my first reading. The book is essentially about "Strange Loops" with perhaps the most pressing today being can intelligent behavior be programmed? The author puts forth that this seeming contradiction is no contradiction at all. I guess we'll see.  

The book has been called the bible of artificial intelligence since it first came out who's to argue.