kay@warwick.UUCP (Kay Dekker) (10/25/85)
In article <2246@iddic.UUCP> dorettas@iddic.UUCP (Doretta Schrock) writes: >Has anyone else read _Godel, Escher, Bach_? Or Pylyshyn's _Computation and >Cognition_? Or _The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction_? What did >you think? I've read G,E,B: I can't say I thought much of it at all. I find DH's style irritating, confusing and condescending. Certainly many people around here consider it simply as a book to leave around on coffee tables to indicate intellectuality. As a sidethought: of the 20 or so people who I know who have read G,E,B (and I'm only counting those who have persevered beyond the first couple of sections), those who are/were within the AI/Cognition cluster seemed to appreciate it most, while Computer Scientists tended to dismiss it as 'trendy garbage'. Engineers liked the pictures :-) Computation & Cognition? Haven't read it through yet (I had 40 minutes with someone else's copy), but consider it well worth reading on that limited basis. Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction? Haven't heard of this. Who's it by? Would *you* recommend it? Disclaimer: I'm not a Cognition person: I just happen to live with one. Kay. -- rmgroup 'em till they glow... ... mcvax!ukc!warwick!flame!kay
klahr@csd2.UUCP (10/29/85)
Here's someone who just meandered onto this net, giving his $0.02 worth: I read GEB and I liked it very much. Granted, there are sections where I felt toyed with, others that I felt were far too long-winded (as was this past phrase- see what I just did? That's a fairly common Hofstadter cutesy ploy), and others that I found fuzzy, confusing, and not too comprehensible. But in return for putting up with these nuisances, I got a very entertaining and very readable introduction to one man's philosophical views of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (capitalized as the heroes of this tome- sized epic). I thought I was given a fairly good qualitative feel for the substance of 20th century mathematical set theory, as embodied by the famous Godel's Theorem, and found the analogies made to molecular biology, Bach cantatas, and Escher drawings very interesting and helpful to following the overall scheme of things. The heart of the book is Hofstadter's tying together the implications of G, E, and B's use of Recursion with his own thesis for what is THE true nature of the mind, what is intelligence, and what "true" artificial intelligence is. While I don't agree with it, I thought I was given an intelligent hypothesis. If you want a good, nontextbook type intro to AI, if you're interested in cognitive theory, or if you want to know more about Godel's Theorem than "no system can be perfectly self contained", or even if you'd like to know more about Bach or Escher, try it! By the way, Hofstadter has published another book, a collection of columns he wrote for Scientific American on similar topics. The book is called Metamagical Themas (an anagram of Mathematical Games, the name of the column by Martin Gardner that H's column replaced).
dorettas@iddic.UUCP (Doretta Schrock) (10/29/85)
> In article <2246@iddic.UUCP> dorettas@iddic.UUCP (Doretta Schrock) writes: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Please note. I am not Doretta Schrock. We have agreed on this. See below for my True Identity. > >Has anyone else read _Godel, Escher, Bach_? Or Pylyshyn's _Computation and > >Cognition_? Or _The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction_? What did > >you think? > > I've read G,E,B: I can't say I thought much of it at all. I find DH's > style irritating, confusing and condescending. Hmmm. I guess I'd have to agree with the condescending, in some spots, though considering the subject matter I think he was walking a pretty thin line between confusing and condescending. Escher and Bach have always been two of my favorites (math like Godel's always scared me too much :-), so I was overjoyed to see their material fused with AI and etcetera. One of my profs called GEB 'the Bible' for anyone getting started with heavy-duty AI or cognition work. I don't know that I'd go *that* far, but it was good. I wonder if some of your dislike could be idiomatic? Thinking about it, the book does read pretty American. > . . . those who are/were within the AI/Cognition cluster seemed > to appreciate it most, while Computer Scientists tended to dismiss it as > 'trendy garbage'. Engineers liked the pictures :-) I'll have to remember that as a way of classifying the three animal types :-) > Computation & Cognition? Haven't read it through yet (I had 40 minutes > with someone else's copy), but consider it well worth reading on that > limited basis. *This* is a good book. Pylyshyn (it took years of hard work for me to learn to spell that name :-) is a bit heavy on the computational side for me, but his ideas of "functional architecture", "cognitive penetrability", and "carving nature at the joints [from Plato, I think]" are right on the money. This book hasn't gotten nearly the attention it should, but I guess things tend to move slowly in scientific/engineering circles. > Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction? Haven't heard of this. Who's > it by? Would *you* recommend it? This is by Card, Newell, and Moran (correct me if I'm wrong). Probably one of the foundational books of "enlightened" user interface design. We didn't use this when I was in school, though I wish we had. It just occured to me that it is possible that some or all of Drs. Hofstadter, Pylyshyn, Card, Newell, or Moran might be reading this. Comments, anyone? Now, I *am*... Mike Sellers ^^^^^^^^^^^^ "A little nonsense Now and Then Is relished by The wisest men..."
grunwald@uiucdcsb.CS.UIUC.EDU (10/29/85)
I thought GEB was a good introduction to certain formalisms which some people have a difficult time understandning. A friend of mine is an anthropologist who abuses the concept of Godels incompleteness theorem, stating that it illustrates the fact that no complete theory of human cognition can be devised. Through GEB, I got the point through that you need to be able to devise an isomorphism between the propositional calculus & human cognition before you could begin to make such claims. So, for someone who knows a lot about the field, perhaps it is baboosh, but for people with limited theory background, it's a useful vehicle for explination.
scott@gargoyle.UUCP (Scott Deerwester) (10/31/85)
I and a friend once spent a good part of an afternoon figuring out the the Hebrew inscription at the beginning of the book was a selection of a few verses out of Genesis in an ancient Hebrew script... printed upside down. -- Scott Deerwester Graduate Library School University of Chicago ...!ihnp4!gargoyle!scott UUCP scott@UChicago.CSNet CSNet scott@UChicago.ARPA ARPA
zwicky@osu-eddie.UUCP (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) (11/01/85)
The Pylyshyn in question I have not read. I have read some Pylyshyn, specifically on AI and the Turing test, and found it to be murky at best and in parts what even philosophers admitted was so philosophical as to be meaningless. This caused me to think twice before reading anything else of his; it's not good for the paint to throw books at the walls. GEB I read with great enjoyment, twice in a rather bed-ridden summer in high school. Once alone, and once with a friend who was also bed-ridden at the time and had nothing better to do. We both liked it, she perhaps more than I, although to this day it is all th connection she has to any of this stuff except Bach. I am not certain that Hofstadter is always right, but there is value in being intriguingly wrong (to a degree); if you hit the right balance between interest and falsehood, you can induce people to read enough more to find the truth. You can at least show them why anybody might be interested, which has more value than you might think, if you've never tried to explain to a health-inspector grandfather what cognitive science is an why you'd be interested in it. Elizabeth D. Zwicky