>Have you ever read "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Hofstadter? I'm struggling though that now. That's what I'm looking for, the golden braid.<

AnnaStrophic,

I read it years ago and enjoyed it and the ideas it raised. It's been a while and I may have remembered the arguments wrongly, or twisted them to suit my meaning, but I think there's a difference between Hofstadter's point and what you are noticing.

Hofstadter is talking about self-replication and self-reference. The similar things are coming from one source. What's happening on the board is that the one source (the board) is attracting similar things (new members with like concerns and interests) from outside. So it's not really self-referencing. Gödel, Escher, Bach - and especially Gödel, with DNA - is self-referencing and much more mindblowing. A picture of yourself looking at a picture of yourself looking at a picture of....

(Max, if you're reading this, aren't you honoured to have become the focus of such debate?)