View source for Philosophy:Hofstadter's law

{{short description|Self-referential adage referring to time estimates}}
'''Hofstadter's law''' is a self-referential [[Philosophy:Adage|adage]], coined by [[Biography:Douglas Hofstadter|Douglas Hofstadter]] in his book ''[[Gödel, Escher, Bach|Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid]]'' (1979) to describe the widely experienced difficulty of accurately estimating the time it will take to complete tasks of substantial [[Complexity|complexity]]:<ref>{{cite book |title=Electronic technologies and preservation |last1=Waters |first1=Donald J. |author2=Commission on Preservation and Access |year=1992 |publisher=Commission on Preservation and Access |isbn=9781887334167 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JbHgAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Hofstadter's+law%22 |access-date=2011-06-08 }}</ref><ref name="geb20">''Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid''. 20th anniversary ed., 1999, p. 152. {{ISBN|0-465-02656-7}}.</ref>

{{quote|Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.<ref name="geb20"/>}}

The law is often cited by [[Programmer|programmer]]s in discussions of techniques to improve productivity, such as ''[[The Mythical Man-Month]]'' or [[Extreme programming|extreme programming]].<ref>{{cite journal |author=David M. Goldschmidt |date=October 3, 1983 |title=The trials and tribulations of a cottage industrialist |journal=InfoWorld |volume=5 |issue=40 |pages=16 |publisher=InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2C8EAAAAMBAJ&q=%22Hofstadter%27s+law%22&pg=PA16 |access-date=2011-06-08 }}</ref>

==History==
In 1979, Hofstadter introduced the law in connection with a discussion of [[Software:Computer chess|chess-playing computers]], which at the time were continually being beaten by top-level human players, despite outpacing humans in depth of [[Recursion (computer science)|analysis]].  Hofstadter wrote:

{{quote|In the early days of computer chess, people used to estimate that it would be ten years until a computer (or program) was world champion. But after ten years had passed, it seemed that the day a computer would become world champion was still more than ten years away... <!-- sic --> This is just one more piece of evidence for the rather [[Recursion|recursive]] Hofstadter's Law.<ref>''Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', Basic Books 1979, Vintage Books Edition, 1980, p. 152.</ref><ref>''Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid''. 20th anniversary ed., 1999, p. 152. {{ISBN|0-465-02656-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Unwritten Laws: The Unofficial Rules of Life as Handed Down by Murphy and Other Sages |last=Rawson |first=Hugh |year=2002 |publisher=Book Sales |isbn= 9780785815433|page=115 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6OqbX7Z59wMC&q=%22Hofstadter's+law%22+chess |access-date=2011-06-08}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Hofstadter's Law |website=The Unwritten Laws of Life |year=2008 | url=http://lawsoflife.co.uk/hofstadters-law/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110826030032/http://lawsoflife.co.uk/hofstadters-law/|archive-date=2011-08-26}}</ref>}}

In 1997, the chess computer Deep Blue became the first to beat a human champion by defeating Garry Kasparov.

== See also ==
* {{annotated link|Lindy effect}}
* {{annotated link|Philosophy:List of eponymous laws}}
* {{annotated link|Ninety–ninety rule}}
* {{annotated link|Philosophy:Optimism bias}}
* {{annotated link|Philosophy:Parkinson's law}}
* {{annotated link|Philosophy:Planning fallacy}}
* {{annotated link|Reference class forecasting}}
* {{annotated link|Social:Student syndrome}}
* {{annotated link|Physics:Vierordt's law}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}


[[Category:Adages]]

{{Sourceattribution|Hofstadter's law}}