I sent this email today.

Hello Professor Hofstadter,

I will try to keep this short as I know you’re probably busy. My main take-away from the MU puzzle in Gödel, Escher, Bach was that, due to our intelligence, we are able to exit once we realize we’re stuck in a loop. The past year I’ve held this thought that the act of reproducing conscious beings is such a loop. It goes: Birth > Growth > Reproduction > (New Branching Birth) > Death. There is no end goal in sight and mostly persists due to our biological nature. This might be fine for the less intelligent animals, but for humans this seems to be an existential mess. One solution to this issue is to exit the loop through anti-natalism. If everyone decided not have children, our conscious species would leave this futile loop. But again, this may be futile itself, as yet another species may evolve with consciousness. I am hoping you would care to weigh in on this issue. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.


Anyone care to weigh in on this?
Is it a sort of test where once you have enough intelligence, you exit the cycle of reproduction?

>inb4 kids are great and having kids is beneficial to me
Put your personal feelings aside and try to view this objectively.