Our computers, which are themselves accelerating, have been a critical tool in enabling us to handle increasingly complex models, which we would otherwise be unable to envision with our brains alone. Clearly, Hofstadter’s concern would be correct if we were limited just to models that we could keep in our minds without technology to assist us. That our intelligence is just above the threshold necessary to understand itself results from our native ability, combined with the tools of our own making, to envision, refine, extend, and alter abstract—and increasingly subtle—models of our own
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