That's not what he claims. You have apparently only heard the soundbites. All the details of his proposals are in his book (check Amazon). After reading it, I happen to think that his engineering approach is brilliant compared to the traditional gerontological approach. Periodically repairing the damage (of which there are only 7 types) before it accumulates enough to create pathologies is much smarter than trying to learn how to cure all pathologies, or trying to fiddle with metabolism. For a quick overview, you can google his TED talk (but it's a bit old and doesn't contain much biology).
>And Hofstadter, the guy who wrote that really dumb book? (Here I admit that I only read the introduction
Once again, you seem to be commenting on something that you don't know much about. I'll admit I like Hofstadter more for who he is and how he writes, not for a specific idea or achievement, but GEB definitely isn't "dumb".
