At the time of Hofstadter’s Singularity Summit talk , I wondered why he wasn’t “getting with the program”, and it became clear he was a mysterian: He believed—without being a dualist -- that some things, like the mind, are ultimately, basically, essentially, impossible to understand or describe.
This 2023 interview shows that the new generation of AI has done more than chagne his mind about the potential of AI: it has struck at the core of his mysterianism
the human mind is not so mysterious and complex and impenetrably complex as I imagined it was when I was writing Gödel, Escher, Bach and writing I Am a Strange Loop.
He was only a de facto mysterian: thought mind is so complicated that it may as well be mysterious (but ofc he believed it’s ultimately just physics). This position is updateable, and he clearly updated.
At the time of Hofstadter’s Singularity Summit talk , I wondered why he wasn’t “getting with the program”, and it became clear he was a mysterian: He believed—without being a dualist -- that some things, like the mind, are ultimately, basically, essentially, impossible to understand or describe.
This 2023 interview shows that the new generation of AI has done more than chagne his mind about the potential of AI: it has struck at the core of his mysterianism
He was only a de facto mysterian: thought mind is so complicated that it may as well be mysterious (but ofc he believed it’s ultimately just physics). This position is updateable, and he clearly updated.
Gwern’s comment makes it clear to me that Hofstadter has never been a mysterian.