Douglas Hofstadter quotes - page 2

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order. (Douglas Hofstadter)
The following sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
. . . all meaning comes from analogies. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
It is perhaps wrong to say that the enemy of enlightenment is logic; rather, it is dualistic, verbal thinking. In fact, it is even more basic than that: it is perception. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
How gullible are you? Is your gullibility located in some "gullibility center" in your brain? Could a neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
There has to be a common sense cutoff for craziness, and when that threshold is exceeded, then the criteria for publication should get far, far more stringent. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Some of us, perhaps all of us, believe that it is legitimate to kill enemy soldiers in a war, as if war were a special circumstance that shrinks the sizes of enemy souls. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
Reductionism is merciless. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
You can imagine a soul as being a detailed, elaborate pattern that exists very clearly in one brain. When a person dies, the original is no longer around. But there are other versions of it in other people's brains. It's a less detailed copy, it's coarse-grained. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
The strange flavour of AI work is that people try to put together long sets of rules in strict formalisms which tell inflexible machines how to be flexible. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter
We don't want to focus on the trees (or their leaves) at the expense of the forest. (Douglas Hofstadter)
I don't feel I have the right to snuff the lives of chicken and fish. View quote
Douglas Hofstadter