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Douglas Hofstadter

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Douglas Hofstadter
Hofstadter in 2006
Born
Douglas Richard Hofstadter

(1945-02-15) February 15, 1945 (age 80)
New York City, US
EducationStanford University (BS)
University of Oregon (PhD)
Known forGödel, Escher, Bach
I Am a Strange Loop[3]
Hofstadter's butterfly
Hofstadter's law
Spouse(s)Carol Ann Brush (1985–1993; her death)
Baofen Lin (2012–present)
Children2
AwardsNational Book Award
Pulitzer Prize
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement[1]
Scientific career
FieldsCognitive science
Philosophy of mind
Artificial intelligence
Physics
InstitutionsIndiana University
Stanford University
University of Oregon
University of Michigan
ThesisThe Energy Levels of Bloch Electrons in a Magnetic Field (1975)
Doctoral advisorGregory Wannier[2]
Doctoral studentsDavid Chalmers
Robert M. French
Scott A. Jones
Melanie Mitchell
Websitecogs.indiana.edu/..

Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born 15 February 1945) is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world,[3][4] consciousness, analogy-making, strange loops, artificial intelligence, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction,[5][6] and a National Book Award (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science.[7][note 1] His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.[8][9][10][11]

Early life and education

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Hofstadter was born in New York City to future Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter and Nancy Givan Hofstadter.[12] He grew up on the campus of Stanford University, where his father was a professor, and attended the International School of Geneva in 1958–59. He graduated with distinction in mathematics from Stanford University in 1965, and received his PhD in physics[2][13] from the University of Oregon in 1975, where his study of the energy levels of Bloch electrons in a magnetic field led to his discovery of the fractal known as Hofstadter's butterfly.[13]

Academic career

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Hofstadter was initially appointed to Indiana University's computer science department faculty in 1977, and at that time he launched his research program in computer modeling of mental processes (which he called "artificial intelligence research", a label he has since dropped in favor of "cognitive science research"). In 1984, he moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was hired as a professor of psychology and was also appointed to the Walgreen Chair for the Study of Human Understanding.

In 1988, Hofstadter returned to IU as College of Arts and Sciences Professor in cognitive science and computer science. He was also appointed adjunct professor of history and philosophy of science, philosophy, comparative literature, and psychology, but has said that his involvement with most of those departments is nominal.[14][15][16]

Since 1988, Hofstadter has been the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, which consists of himself and his graduate students, forming the "Fluid Analogies Research Group" (FARG).[17] In 1988, he received the In Praise of Reason award, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry's highest honor.[18] In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[19] and became a member of the American Philosophical Society.[20] In 2010, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden.[21]

Work and publications

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At the University of Michigan and Indiana University, Hofstadter and Melanie Mitchell coauthored a computational model of "high-level perception"—Copycat—and several other models of analogy-making and cognition, including the Tabletop project, co-developed with Robert M. French.[22] The Letter Spirit project, implemented by Gary McGraw and John Rehling, aims to model artistic creativity by designing stylistically uniform "gridfonts" (typefaces limited to a grid). Other more recent models include Phaeaco (implemented by Harry Foundalis) and SeqSee (Abhijit Mahabal), which model high-level perception and analogy-making in the microdomains of Bongard problems and number sequences, respectively, as well as George (Francisco Lara-Dammer), which models the processes of perception and discovery in triangle geometry.[23][24][25]

Hofstadter's thesis about consciousness, first expressed in Gödel, Escher, Bach but also present in several of his later books, is that it is "an emergent consequence of seething lower-level activity in the brain."[citation needed] In Gödel, Escher, Bach he draws an analogy between the social organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent "colony" of neurons. In particular, Hofstadter claims that our sense of having (or being) an "I" comes from the abstract pattern he terms a "strange loop", an abstract cousin of such concrete phenomena as audio and video feedback that Hofstadter has defined as "a level-crossing feedback loop". The prototypical example of a strange loop is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Hofstadter's 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop carries his vision of consciousness considerably further, including the idea that each human "I" is distributed over numerous brains, rather than being limited to one.[26] Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language is a long book devoted to language and translation, especially poetry translation, and one of its leitmotifs is a set of 88 translations of "Ma Mignonne", a highly constrained poem by 16th-century French poet Clément Marot. In this book, Hofstadter jokingly describes himself as "pilingual" (meaning that the sum total of the varying degrees of mastery of all the languages that he has studied comes to 3.14159 ...), as well as an "oligoglot" (someone who speaks "a few" languages).[27][28]

In 1999, the bicentennial year of the Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin, Hofstadter published a verse translation of Pushkin's classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin. He has translated other poems and two novels: La Chamade (That Mad Ache) by Françoise Sagan, and La Scoperta dell'Alba (The Discovery of Dawn) by Walter Veltroni, the then-head of the Partito Democratico in Italy. The Discovery of Dawn was published in 2007, and That Mad Ache was published in 2009, bound together with Hofstadter's essay "Translator, Trader: An Essay on the Pleasantly Pervasive Paradoxes of Translation".[citation needed]

Hofstadter's law

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Main article: Hofstadter's law

Hofstadter's law is "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." The law is stated in Gödel, Escher, Bach.

Students

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Hofstadter's former Ph.D. students[29] include (with dissertation title):

  • David Chalmers – Toward a Theory of Consciousness
  • Bob French – Tabletop: An Emergent, Stochastic Model of Analogy-Making
  • Gary McGraw – Letter Spirit (Part One): Emergent High-level Perception of Letters Using Fluid Concepts
  • Melanie Mitchell – Copycat: A Computer Model of High-Level Perception and Conceptual Slippage in Analogy-making

Public image

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Hofstadter in Bologna, Italy, in 2002

Hofstadter has said that he feels "uncomfortable with the nerd culture that centers on computers". He admits that "a large fraction [of his audience] seems to be those who are fascinated by technology", but when it was suggested that his work "has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence" he replied that he was pleased about that, but that he himself has "no interest in computers".[30][31] In that interview he also mentioned a course he has twice given at Indiana University, in which he took a "skeptical look at a number of highly touted AI projects and overall approaches".[16] For example, upon the defeat of Garry Kasparov by Deep Blue, he commented: "It was a watershed event, but it doesn't have to do with computers becoming intelligent."[32] In his book Metamagical Themas, he says that "in this day and age, how can anyone fascinated by creativity and beauty fail to see in computers the ultimate tool for exploring their essence?"[33]

In 1988, Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos created a docudrama about Hofstadter and his ideas, Victim of the Brain, based on The Mind's I. It includes interviews with Hofstadter about his work.[34]

Provoked by predictions of a technological singularity (a hypothetical moment in the future of humanity when a self-reinforcing, runaway development of artificial intelligence causes a radical change in technology and culture), Hofstadter has both organized and participated in several public discussions of the topic. At Indiana University in 1999 he organized such a symposium, and in April 2000, he organized a larger symposium titled "Spiritual Robots" at Stanford University, in which he moderated a panel consisting of Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Kevin Kelly, Ralph Merkle, Bill Joy, Frank Drake, John Holland and John Koza. Hofstadter was also an invited panelist at the first Singularity Summit, held at Stanford in May 2006. Hofstadter expressed doubt that the singularity will occur in the foreseeable future.[35][36][37][38][39][40]

In a 2023 interview, Hofstadter said that rapid progress in AI made some of his "core beliefs" about AI's limitations "collapse".[41][42] Hinting at an AI takeover, he added that human beings may soon be eclipsed by "something else that is far more intelligent and will become incomprehensible to us".[43][44]

Columnist

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When Martin Gardner retired from writing his "Mathematical Games" column for Scientific American magazine, Hofstadter succeeded him in 1981–83 with a column titled Metamagical Themas (an anagram of "Mathematical Games"). An idea he introduced in one of these columns was the concept of "Reviews of This Book", a book containing nothing but cross-referenced reviews of itself that has an online implementation.[45] One of Hofstadter's columns in Scientific American concerned the damaging effects of sexist language, and two chapters of his book Metamagical Themas are devoted to that topic, one of which is a biting analogy-based satire, "A Person Paper on Purity in Language" (1985), in which the reader's presumed revulsion at racism and racist language is used as a lever to motivate an analogous revulsion at sexism and sexist language; Hofstadter published it under the pseudonym William Satire, an allusion to William Safire.[46] Another column reported on the discoveries made by University of Michigan professor Robert Axelrod in his computer tournament pitting many iterated prisoner's dilemma strategies against each other, and a follow-up column discussed a similar tournament that Hofstadter and his graduate student Marek Lugowski organized.[citation needed] The "Metamagical Themas" columns ranged over many themes, including patterns in Frédéric Chopin's piano music (particularly his études), the concept of superrationality (choosing to cooperate when the other party/adversary is assumed to be equally intelligent as oneself), and the self-modifying game of Nomic, based on the way the legal system modifies itself, and developed by philosopher Peter Suber.[47]

Personal life

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Hofstadter was married to Carol Ann Brush until her death. They met in Bloomington, and married in Ann Arbor in 1985. They had two children. Carol died in 1993 from the sudden onset of a brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, when their children were young. The Carol Ann Brush Hofstadter Memorial Scholarship for Bologna-bound Indiana University students was established in 1996 in her name.[48] Hofstadter's book Le Ton beau de Marot is dedicated to their two children and its dedication reads "To M. & D., living sparks of their Mommy's soul". In 2010, Hofstadter met his second wife, Baofen Lin, in a cha-cha-cha class. They married in 2012 in Bloomington.[49][50]

Hofstadter has composed pieces for piano and for piano and voice. He created an audio CD, DRH/JJ, of these compositions performed mostly by pianist Jane Jackson, with a few performed by Brian Jones, Dafna Barenboim, Gitanjali Mathur, and Hofstadter.[51]

The dedication for I Am A Strange Loop is: "To my sister Laura, who can understand, and to our sister Molly, who cannot."[52] Hofstadter explains in the preface that his younger sister Molly never developed the ability to speak or understand language.[53]

As a consequence of his attitudes about consciousness and empathy, Hofstadter became a vegetarian in his teenage years, and has remained primarily so since that time.[54][55]

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In the 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke's first sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 is described by the character "Dr. Chandra" as being caught in a "Hofstadter–Möbius loop". The movie uses the term "H. Möbius loop". On 3 April 1995, Hofstadter's book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought was the first book sold by Amazon.com.[56] Michael R. Jackson's musical A Strange Loop makes reference to Hofstadter's concept and the title of his 2007 book.

Published works

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Books

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The books published by Hofstadter are (the ISBNs refer to paperback editions, where available):

  • Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (ISBN 0-465-02656-7) (1979)
  • Metamagical Themas (ISBN 0-465-04566-9) (collection of Scientific American columns and other essays, all with postscripts) (1985)
  • Ambigrammi: un microcosmo ideale per lo studio della creatività (ISBN 88-7757-006-7) (in Italian only)
  • Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies (co-authored with several of Hofstadter's graduate students) (ISBN 0-465-02475-0)
  • Rhapsody on a Theme by Clement Marot (ISBN 0-910153-11-6) (1995, published 1996; volume 16 of series The Grace A. Tanner Lecture in Human Values)
  • Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (ISBN 0-465-08645-4)
  • I Am a Strange Loop (ISBN 0-465-03078-5) (2007)
  • Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, co-authored with Emmanuel Sander (ISBN 0-465-01847-5) (first published in French as L'Analogie. Cœur de la pensée; published in English in the U.S. in April 2013)

Involvement in other books

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Hofstadter has written forewords for or edited the following books:

Translations

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See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Gödel, Escher, Bach won the 1980 award for hardcover science.

References

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  1. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on 15 December 2016. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  2. ^ a b Hofstadter, Douglas Richard (1975). The Energy Levels of Bloch Electrons in a Magnetic Field (PhD thesis). University of Oregon. ProQuest 288009604.
  3. ^ a b Hofstadter, Douglas R. (2008) [2003]. I Am a Strange Loop. New York, NY: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-03079-8.
  4. ^ Hofstadter, D. R. (1982). "Who shoves whom around inside the careenium? Or what is the meaning of the word "I"?". Synthese. 53 (#2): 189–218. doi:10.1007/BF00484897. S2CID 46972278.
  5. ^ "General Nonfiction" Archived 26 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Past winners and finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 17 March 2012.
  6. ^ A bedside book of paradoxes Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, New York Times
  7. ^ "National Book Awards – 1980" Archived 13 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  8. ^ "And the L.A. Times Book Prize winners are..." Los Angeles Times. 26 April 2008. Archived from the original on 10 April 2023. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
  9. ^ "Book Prizes – Los Angeles Times Festival of Books» Winners by Award". Archived from the original on 5 April 2013. Retrieved 25 September 2012.. Events.latimes.com (22 November 1963). Retrieved on 6 October 2013.
  10. ^ Douglas Hofstadter at DBLP Bibliography Server Edit this at Wikidata
  11. ^ Douglas Hofstadter's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  12. ^ Stanford News Service,Nancy Hofstadter, widow of Nobel laureate in physics, dead at 87 Archived 24 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, 17 August 2007.
  13. ^ a b Hofstadter, Douglas (1976). "Energy levels and wave functions of Bloch electrons in rational and irrational magnetic fields". Physical Review B. 14 (#6): 2239–2249. Bibcode:1976PhRvB..14.2239H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.14.2239.
  14. ^ IU pages as faculty Archived 31 December 2003 at the Wayback Machine, IU distinguished faculty Archived 25 February 2004 at the Wayback Machine (see this announcement Archived 16 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine on 21 March 2007 speaker Archived 16 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ A Day in the Life of ... Douglas Hofstadter Archived 30 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine 2004
  16. ^ a b Seminar: AI: Hope and Hype Archived 6 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine 1999
  17. ^ "Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition: Indiana University Bloomington". Archived from the original on 11 April 2018. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  18. ^ Shore, Lys Ann (1988). "New Light on the New Age CSICOP's Chicago conference was the first to critically evaluate the New Age movement". The Skeptical Inquirer. 13 (#3): 226–235.
  19. ^ "American Academy of Arts & Sciences". Archived from the original on 28 July 2012. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  20. ^ "Home - American Philosophical Society". Archived from the original on 29 April 2016. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  21. ^ Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition: Indiana University Bloomington Archived 26 June 1997 at the Wayback Machine. Cogsci.indiana.edu. Retrieved on 6 October 2013.
  22. ^ An overview of Metacat Archived 18 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine 2003
  23. ^ By Analogy: A talk with the most remarkable researcher in artificial intelligence today, Douglas Hofstadter, the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach Archived 9 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine Wired Magazine, November 1995
  24. ^ Analogy as the Core of Cognition Archived 11 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine Review of Stanford lecture, 2 February 2006
  25. ^ Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition Archived 26 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  26. ^ Consciousness In The Cosmos: Perspective of Mind: Douglas Hofstadter Archived 4 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  27. ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. Le Ton Beau de Marot. New York: Basic Books, 1997, pp. 16–17.
  28. ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. Le Ton Beau de Marot, Chapter "How Jolly the Lot of an Oligoglot", New York: Basic Books, 1997, pp. 15–62.
  29. ^ "People at the CRCC". The Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  30. ^ "Me, My Soul, and I". Wired. March 2007. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 10 December 2007.
  31. ^ The Mind Reader Archived 1 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, New York Times Magazine, 1 April 2007
  32. ^ Mean Chess-Playing Computer Tears at Meaning of Thought Archived 17 March 2015 at Wikiwix by Bruce Weber, 19 February 1996, New York Times
  33. ^ Hofstadter, Douglas (1985). Metamagical Themas (PDF). p. 9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 August 2018. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
  34. ^ Victim of the Brain Archived 17 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine – 1988 docudrama about the ideas of Douglas Hofstadter
  35. ^ "Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity By 2100?", 1 April 2000 Note: as of 2007, videos seem to be missing.
  36. ^ "Moore's Law, Artificial Evolution, and the Fate of Humanity." In L. Booker, S. Forrest, et al. (eds.), Perspectives on Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  37. ^ The Singularity Summit at Stanford Archived 18 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine 2006
  38. ^ Trying to Muse Rationally about the Singularity Scenario Archived 30 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine 35 minute video, 13 May 2006
  39. ^ Quotes from his 2006 Singularity Summit presentation Archived 28 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  40. ^ "Staring EMI Straight in the Eye—and Doing My Best Not to Flinch." In David Cope, Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
  41. ^ Amy Jo Kim (29 July 2023). "Doug Hofstadter: Reflections on AI". Buzzsprout: Getting2Alpha. Archived from the original on 6 February 2025. Retrieved 6 February 2025.
  42. ^ Gödel, Escher, Bach author Doug Hofstadter on the state of AI today on YouTube
  43. ^ Brooks, David (13 July 2023). "Opinion | 'Human Beings Are Soon Going to Be Eclipsed'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  44. ^ Bastian, Matthias (9 July 2023). "Douglas Hofstadter thinks GPT-4 may undermine the "nature of truth on which our society is based"". The decoder. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  45. ^ Online implementation of his Reviews of this Book idea Archived 7 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  46. ^ A Person Paper on Purity in Language Archived 16 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine by William Satire (alias Douglas R. Hofstadter), 1985 – a satirical piece, on the subject of sexist language
  47. ^ Metamagical Themas, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Basic Books, New York (1985), see preface, introduction, contents listing.
  48. ^ French and Italian Archived 12 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine Spring 1996, Vol. X
  49. ^ "Search".[permanent dead link]
  50. ^ Rachael Himsel (November 2013). "Falling in Love, With Panache". The Ryder. Archived from the original on 1 September 2023. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  51. ^ Piano Music by Douglas Hofstadter (audio CD), 2000, ISBN 1-57677-143-1
  52. ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. I Am a Strange Loop, p. v. Basic Books, 2007.
  53. ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. I Am a Strange Loop, p. xi. Basic Books, 2007. "No one knew what it was, but Molly wasn't able to understand language or to speak (nor is she to this day, and we never did find out why)."
  54. ^ Gardner, Martin (August 2007). "Do Loops Explain Consciousness? Review of I Am a Strange Loop" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 54 (#7): 853. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 February 2008. Retrieved 10 December 2007.
  55. ^ Hofstadter, Douglas (2007). I Am a Strange Loop. Basic Books. pp. 13–14.
  56. ^ McCullough, Brian (3 April 2015). "What Was The First Item Ever Ordered On Amazon?". Retrieved 6 August 2021.
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