“It always takes longer than you expect; even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”
— [Douglas] Hofstadter’s Law. Which law governs my life on levels so recursive, fractal, and self-referential that it could only have been described this profoundly by the Gödel, Escher, Bach guy.
See also: Metamagical Themas. Section 1: self-referential sentences, self-replicating structures (memes!), and a self-modifying game.
The book is actually a collection of articles from Hofstadter’s Scientific American column in the ’80s (with additional commentary by the man himself) and is a remarkably interesting and entertaining read. I’m also told it’s far superior to GEB, which was somewhat watered down (for the noobs), but I wouldn’t know.
Trivia: the title is an anagram of “Mathematical Games,” the title of the column Hofstadter replaced. Wordplay!
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