On 4/1/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/1/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Sorry to say, but in this case it's Hofstadter, not us, who is wrong. His book _Goedel, Escher, Bach_ in particular *has* inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence, whether to not he likes that fact.
I started to wonder about that after my first post in this thread. Is it possible that the AI inspiration thing is a phenomenon that Hofstadter was unaware of.
The claim should be better referenced, but that's not too hard to do since there are dozens of prominent researchers who have cited his book as an influence.
But until good citable references are produced, it remains something that "everybody just knows" and should stay out of the Article.
And he seems to imply there are other errors too.
In any case, I don't see this as a problem in reference to specific errors. Whether he's right or they're right or whatever _doesn't really matter here_.
What's important is this _attitude_ and it is one that is _persistent_ and it is _not entirely unfounded_. And it is why a lot of very smart people dismiss Wikipedia and would never think of participating even in a very small way. And in a sense, they're not at all incorrect, in my view.
FF