Now that I will have to agree with you on, but only because the essays are self-contained so you can just read the good stuff. Among other things, here’s what’s relevant to rationality and AI:
-The discussion on typography, which I found very interesting. Hofstadter makes a good case that general character recognition is AI-complete. (“The central problem of AI is ‘What is “A” and what is “I”?’”)
-The three-part intro to Lisp, which gives you a good and short (though IMHO too gushing) intro to what’s useful about Lisp.
-A great discussion on analogies that starts from “Who is the First Lady (president’s wife) of England, if the prime minister is Margaret Thatcher (a woman)?” That’s useful for understanding intelligence.
There is an article that explains how perfectly rational people should play a game while realizing the other people are also perfectly rational. You can see some of it on Google Books and an overview at Wikipedia.
Now that I will have to agree with you on, but only because the essays are self-contained so you can just read the good stuff. Among other things, here’s what’s relevant to rationality and AI:
-The discussion on typography, which I found very interesting. Hofstadter makes a good case that general character recognition is AI-complete. (“The central problem of AI is ‘What is “A” and what is “I”?’”)
-The three-part intro to Lisp, which gives you a good and short (though IMHO too gushing) intro to what’s useful about Lisp.
-A great discussion on analogies that starts from “Who is the First Lady (president’s wife) of England, if the prime minister is Margaret Thatcher (a woman)?” That’s useful for understanding intelligence.
There is an article that explains how perfectly rational people should play a game while realizing the other people are also perfectly rational. You can see some of it on Google Books and an overview at Wikipedia.
Wikipedia—Superrationality has an explanation of his take on the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
It’s a great book overall, but I did skip a few articles.