Week One

NOTES ON READING:

GEB: Strange Loopiness and The Braid:

I had not before been aware of strange loops in music - had been in math and art with things such as Escher's "Drawing Hands" and the Epimenides paradox, but had not connected them. Hofstadter braided these together for me powerfully.

I am continuing to ponder the history of "strange loopiness," attempts at banishing it and the consequences thereof (discussion of Godel's Incompleteness Thm and PM), and the implications of strange loops and human intelligence vs. AI.

Am I correct in understanding that a system without the potential for "strange loops" is necessarily incomplete and that a system with the potential for "strange loops" is necessarily inconsistent?

The MIU system and pq- system are fascinating (what a cool, simple description of isomorphism pq- is). I'm working at the MU puzzle. I have not yet turned MI into MU, and given his succeeding discussion I am not yet sure if it is just really hard or impossible. Clearly it is at least meant to be difficult or he could not follow up on it as he has, expecting the reader not to have solved it. Does this mean it is impossible? I'm not ready to give up on it yet.

I love his "invention" interludes and do hear Lewis Carroll resonating all over the place in the style and content - Zeno too, of course. (Also am remembering the Bach "Inventions" I played as a piano student.)

NOTES ON WRITING:

I'm learning by doing!

One thing I've learned it how hard it is to track down sources of "quotes" and anecdotes that I've been familiar with for years, and things I thought were true are not necessarily so! Two examples:

1) I wanted to use "the fact" that T. S. Eliot said poetry had to be hard. This one I have on good authority, but I cannot find that quote that strongly anywhere - have only found something in his collected essays that say that in our time poems must be "difficult" (i.e. complex), but that this might not always have to be the case. If you can direct me with this, please help!

2) There is a lovely anecdote about Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) and Queen Victoria - that she, enamored of his Wonderland works asked to be sent anything else he wrote. She was not amused when sent his next publication, a math text. In researching, I have found that this is an "urban legend," and I am very disappointed!

3) Additionally, I have found that the verse of Edward Lear whom I thought was from Limerick and for whom I thought the poetic form was named, is not actually in the form of a true limerick!

So, there go two - perhaps three things - that I wanted to use in my writing!

A second thing I have found is that it is quite a transition from being a speaker to being a writer. It is a very different medium, and I am having to come up with a new understanding of how to hold the attention of my "audience." This is a more difficult "translation" than I had realized it would be.