Not really. Maybe he hadn’t read the TA piece; and I wonder how much weight to give DH’s opinion these days (he dislikes Wikipedia, which is enough grounds for distrust to me).
Seaching for some corroboration of this I came across this little gem in the Simple English Wikiquotes:
Replying to following question by Deborah Solomon in Questions for Douglas Hofstadter: “Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.” He replied “I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me.” When asked why he didn’t fix it, he replied, “The next day someone will fix it back.”[6]
Simple: Deborah Solomon asked Douglas Hofstadter a question. Deborah Solomon said something that meant, “Your page on Wikipedia has made many students think about having jobs with computers and the way computer’s think.” Douglas Hofstadter said something that meant, “I do not like doing things with computers. The page has many errors, and I am sad at that.” Solomon then asked Hofstadter why he did not fix it. Hofstadter said something that meant, “I did not fix it become someone will fix it back the next day – they will put the errors back in.”
What it means: Hofstadter is saying that while Wikipedia can have errors sometimes, it can be fixed very fast by one of its many users.
I was the Wikipedian who spotted that NYT Mag interview (in my RSS feeds) and added it to the En page, and we interpreted it correctly as Hofstadter’s dislike of us. I disavow Simple in general: it’s the neglected bastard of En and ought to be put to sleep like the 9/11 or Klingon wikis.
Short satire piece:
Artificial Flight and Other Myths, from Dresden Codak.
(Also see A Thinking Ape’s Critique of Trans-Simianism.)
The AF is quite bad; just a retread of the Thinking Ape piece. The Caveman Science Fiction is much better.
Yes, but according to legend, Douglas Hofstadter read and liked AF. Surely that counts for something!
Not really. Maybe he hadn’t read the TA piece; and I wonder how much weight to give DH’s opinion these days (he dislikes Wikipedia, which is enough grounds for distrust to me).
Seaching for some corroboration of this I came across this little gem in the Simple English Wikiquotes:
source
Maybe he has a point!
I was the Wikipedian who spotted that NYT Mag interview (in my RSS feeds) and added it to the En page, and we interpreted it correctly as Hofstadter’s dislike of us. I disavow Simple in general: it’s the neglected bastard of En and ought to be put to sleep like the 9/11 or Klingon wikis.