QuoteFilter: what did Feynman say about "Godel, Escher, Bach"?

February 23, 2011 8:41 AM

What did Feynman say about Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach"? I recall a quote, something like "The book is 90% brilliance and 10% crap, and no one knows which is which" but I can't find the source.
posted by sninctown to Science & Nature (3 answers total)

Response by poster: No one knows :/

I remember Feynman used the analogy of a master chef making a meal with ~95% good ingredients and ~5% crap.
posted by sninctown at 7:48 AM on February 25, 2011

There have been many quotations, attributed to various people, saying that the speaker knew half of a budget was wasted, or half a set of facts were wrong, but didn't know which half. But I can't find a similar quotation by Feynman about Hofstadter.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 6:25 AM on March 23, 2011

Mod note: Final update from the OP:

I mis-remembered. The quote was by Ray Kurzweil, not Feynman. Specifically:

"It's as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. "

posted by cortex (staff) at 12:59 PM on February 20, 2015 [1 favorite]