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G C3 B6del C Escher C Bach 3A An Eternal Golden Braid 8Hofstadter 9

 

All the limitative Theorems of metamathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Church's Undecidability Theorem, Turing Halting Problem, Turski's Truth Theorem-- all have the flavour of some ancient fairy tale which warns you that "To seek self-knowledge is to embark on a journey which ... will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described."
-- Douglas R. Hofstadter. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (p. 697).
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