Will_Newsome comments on [LINK] Gödel, Escher, Bach read through starting on Reddit - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Karmakaiser 28 December 2011 03:37PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 28 December 2011 10:05:50PM 3 points [-]

Adding to this, one of the things LWers are abnormally good at is going meta and switching between levels of abstraction without making type errors. Being able to distinguish levels of abstraction is clearly an important rationality skill, but we don't talk about it much, perhaps because we are already above-average at doing it. GEB discusses this skill at length, so the book may be both a symptom and a cause of our ability to go meta.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 28 December 2011 10:11:45PM *  2 points [-]

Hofstadterian thinking also makes you a much more competent AGI programmer if you're into that kinda thing. In fact Hofstadter's team's Copycat is an example. ETA: Apparently pre-optimization-enlightenment Eliezer agrees.

Comment author: glennonymous 09 January 2012 08:10:55PM 0 points [-]

I KNEW I was cool for having read GEB.