id: 1241,1C
title: Hofstadter’s Law.
date: 2022-11-13

Hofstadter’s Law.

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.rH3

Like with the coastline paradox, the work that can go into something is fractal and therefore effectively infinite. Without knowing precisely up front where higher resolution attention is needed versus not, which is usually only decided through learning and doing, only a coarse measurement can be taken which will always be too short.

  1. ↩

    Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, 20th anniversary ed (New York: Basic Books, 1999). (See notes.)