When I was in second grade, about seven years old, it was my turn to do a show-and-tell project, so I decided to bring a game I’d learned from a book that purported to be about geometry or math or something but seemed to mostly involve silly arguments between a talking turtle and a greek athlete. I assumed my fellow students would enjoy it, since the rules were relatively few and simple (compared to, say, spelling homework) and the victory conditions utterly unambiguous (compared to the bitter disputes of scoring in various playground activities). It seemed to relate to what we were learning, so the teacher might even approve further study.
I could hardly have been more wrong.
The rest of the class just stared blankly, and even the teacher didn’t seem to get it. “But,” she said, “You’ve got ‘mu’ right there at the start. Why don’t you just cross out the rest?” I protested that such a move would be against the rules, but was unable to convey the underlying significance before show-and-tell time was determined to be over.
The book was Goedel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader. I figured that if the teacher couldn’t begin make sense of it, none of the other kids were interested, and even my dad was baffled by some parts, I would have to press on alone and figure it out myself.
Of course, I was way out of my depth, and there’s still quite a bit about recursion, intelligence, axiomatic systems and so on that I’m not sure I’ve got a good handle on. It’s that basic attitude, ‘the only thing I know is that I want to know everything,’ and some other stuff derived from it, that keeps me honest.
When I was in second grade, about seven years old, it was my turn to do a show-and-tell project, so I decided to bring a game I’d learned from a book that purported to be about geometry or math or something but seemed to mostly involve silly arguments between a talking turtle and a greek athlete. I assumed my fellow students would enjoy it, since the rules were relatively few and simple (compared to, say, spelling homework) and the victory conditions utterly unambiguous (compared to the bitter disputes of scoring in various playground activities). It seemed to relate to what we were learning, so the teacher might even approve further study.
I could hardly have been more wrong.
The rest of the class just stared blankly, and even the teacher didn’t seem to get it. “But,” she said, “You’ve got ‘mu’ right there at the start. Why don’t you just cross out the rest?” I protested that such a move would be against the rules, but was unable to convey the underlying significance before show-and-tell time was determined to be over.
The book was Goedel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader. I figured that if the teacher couldn’t begin make sense of it, none of the other kids were interested, and even my dad was baffled by some parts, I would have to press on alone and figure it out myself.
Of course, I was way out of my depth, and there’s still quite a bit about recursion, intelligence, axiomatic systems and so on that I’m not sure I’ve got a good handle on. It’s that basic attitude, ‘the only thing I know is that I want to know everything,’ and some other stuff derived from it, that keeps me honest.