On 1 Apr 2007 at 10:21, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think that Hofstadter, an author I greatly respect by the way, isn't being entirely fair here. The cited statement in Wikipedia's article on him does not actually contradict what Hofstadter said about it; it's perfectly logically consistent for a person to have no interest in computers, but nevertheless have, through his work, inspired many students to begin careers in computing. The former is a statement about Hofstadter's personal interests (about which I would presume Hofstadter himself is the best judge), while the latter is a statement about the interests and motivations of students who read of Hofstadter's work; it's quite possible that they can be motivated in directions that seem bizarre or perverse from the standpoint of the author himself. After all, Jodie Foster could be said to have "motivated" John Hinkley, Jr. to attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan, but that's hardly something she intended, supports, or had an interest in. Anyway, developing an interest in computing and AI from reading Hofstadter's works doesn't even require a leap of madness of the sort that Hinkley underwent; those books are full of references to these topics, and at some points Hofstadter even gives illustrative examples in the form of pseudocode in programming languages he invents for this purpose. I'm not sure in what sense he's not interested in computers (perhaps he just wishes to disassociate himself from the "geek community"?), but his own works seem to show a great interest in the logical and philosophical issues raised by computing. However, if the statement that he's inspired people in those fields is merely a personal feeling of an editor, it should be removed as original research unless a specific source is found. -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/