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From: bs@faron.UUCP (Robert D. Silverman)
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Re: Godel, Escher, Bach problem
Message-ID: <439@faron.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-Jan-86 23:56:36 EST
Article-I.D.: faron.439
Posted: Sun Jan 19 23:56:36 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Jan-86 08:29:18 EST
References: <8431@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Organization: The MITRE Coporation, Bedford, MA
Lines: 40

> --------------- This line intentionally left blank ---------------
> 
> In article <226@decwrl.DEC.COM>, Eric asks:
> 
> >I don't think this got posted the first time I tried it, so I am trying again.
> >
> >In Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter poses the problem of expressing "b
> >is a power of 10" in Typographical Number Theory.  Does anybody have a solution
> >for this?
> 
> He asked this January second; it is now the EIGHTEENTH!  That is SIXTEEN days
> to get the answer.  This is net.math is it not?  I have only one more question,
> 
> 		Why is it that when simple questions are asked
> 		on this net there seem to be nearly a thousand
> 		'GENIUSES', each giving his/her own version of
> 		the answer, but whenever any resonable problem 
> 		is asked, it is promptly ignored?

Sarcasm aside, I can suggest several reasons:

1. While I read GEB I found it overly simplistic and didn't bother with
some of the details such as all the syntactic nuances of typographical
number theory. I'm not aware of it appearing elsewhere. As such, problems
involving it would have limited scope and interest. Maybe people don't
find it an interesting or important problem. I know that I didn't.

2. What makes YOUR assertion that this is a resonable (sic) problem
definitive?  People have many things to do other than answer problems
which derive from some single source and have limited use outside of
its own context.
 
3. Sometimes problems which are simple to state have very complicated
solutions (e.g. 4 color problem etc. etc. etc.) It may not be a simple
problem to solve. I can't realy say since I haven't looked at it. I did
find your comments extremely offensive however. 

4. By the way I notice that YOU failed to post a solution.
 
Bob Silverman