Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2007 13:27:10 -0400 In-Reply-To: 71cd4dd90704010936y9d283carf7b8771a94c07423@mail.gmail.com (Anthony's message of "Sun, 1 Apr 2007 12:36:59 -0400") Message-ID: 86ejn4kntd.fsf_-_@elan.rh.rit.edu User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.0.95 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed --text follows this line-- Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org writes:
On 4/1/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Apr 1, 2007, at 10:58 AM, Ron Ritzman wrote:
On 4/1/07, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions for Douglas Hofstadter", 4/1/07:
Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired
many
students to begin careers in computing and artificial
intelligence.
1000 quatloos says this was something that "everybody knows".
A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.
And of course "everybody" is FOS.
There's no contradiction between the two statements, though.
For that matter, Hofstadter never claimed there was a
contradiction.
He said the entry on him "is filled with inaccuracies". Even if
he
*did* mean to imply that the statement about inspiring many
students
was one of those inaccuracies, he's still claiming there are
many
others.
That said, I just removed the statement about inspiring
students, as
it was anecdotal and lacked sources. If someone cares to
present a
reliable source which claims that Hofstadter has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and AI, feel free to add
it
back with a citation.
So, I fixed it. Want to make a bet someone comes along and
fixes it back?
Anthony
It should be fixed back. I urge everyone who is interested in this thread to take a look at the Hofstadter talk page where I've been working on this since yesterday: there is a Wired interview from '95 where Hofstadter himself says that his book has so inspired people. It is something "everyone knows" because it has achieved the status of cliche; inspiring people is sort of what GEB does.