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yaboybbq's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
aholeistodig's review
4.0
Hard to know what to say about this one--I definitely enjoyed it, but it's one of those books which makes me feel both very smart and very dumb. You're not going to find ideas quite like Hofstadter's anywhere outside Hofstadter.
harrydubois's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
lserver362's review
4.0
For the most part, I liked the analogies and thought experiments presented in this book. Some of the math took a lot of time and some of the made up examples were pretty silly but it was interesting and enjoyable on the whole. The deeply personal aspects really made it compelling.
y4le's review against another edition
4.0
Douglas Hofstadter has discussed consciousness in his previous work, but this time he is serious. I Am A Strange Loop starts off slow, the first 275 pages set up large collection and metaphors and analogies that are then beautifully woven together in the book's main dialogue to lead you to his conclusion. What we call "I" is a mirage, a kind of feedback loop that arises when a system which can devise arbitrarily complex representative symbols forms a representation of its self.
daviest's review
4.0
The first twenty chapters of this book are really good; they delve deep into how a notion of "I" could be formed out of relations between other concepts that a brain could figure out. Unfortunately, the last four or so chapters consist of a weak rebuttal to dualism, which I feel could have been left out with little cost, and rob the book of a five star rating.
Leaving the last part aside, there are a few really interesting ideas the Hofstadter gets across that make this book worth the read:
- Brains come with some hard-wired functionality (e.g. reflexes), and some brains (e.g. mosquito brains) consist of only that functionality
- Larger brains have categories (e.g. dogs might know that different people, while being different entities, all fall into the 'people' category)
- What separates humans from other animals is that humans have arbitrarily extensible category systems
- Babies aren't born with a sense of "I", rather it develops over time out of other 'lesser' (such as person, thinking, body, individual etc) notions as they recognise themselves to be a thinking entity in the world
- Consciousness isn't necessarily a human phenomenon, or even one about brains, if you buy into the "I" as a derived entity theory from the last bullet.
While some people really don't like Hofstadter's writing style, I find that breaking the book up into small sections that span about a single page go a long way into making it easier to read while not disturbing the whole flow too much. That said, the tone of voice can be frustrating at times, as another review said, almost as if he wants you as the reader to like him.
Circling back to the content, I like that the book has both a reductionist derivation of consciousness from first principles (if in a hand-wavy way), but that the motivation and inspiration for doing so seems to be from a more holist angle. I think there's a good chance that there's a way of looking at actual brains that aligns rather well with Hofstadter' view.
Leaving the last part aside, there are a few really interesting ideas the Hofstadter gets across that make this book worth the read:
Spoiler
- Brains come with some hard-wired functionality (e.g. reflexes), and some brains (e.g. mosquito brains) consist of only that functionality
- Larger brains have categories (e.g. dogs might know that different people, while being different entities, all fall into the 'people' category)
- What separates humans from other animals is that humans have arbitrarily extensible category systems
- Babies aren't born with a sense of "I", rather it develops over time out of other 'lesser' (such as person, thinking, body, individual etc) notions as they recognise themselves to be a thinking entity in the world
- Consciousness isn't necessarily a human phenomenon, or even one about brains, if you buy into the "I" as a derived entity theory from the last bullet.
While some people really don't like Hofstadter's writing style, I find that breaking the book up into small sections that span about a single page go a long way into making it easier to read while not disturbing the whole flow too much. That said, the tone of voice can be frustrating at times, as another review said, almost as if he wants you as the reader to like him.
Circling back to the content, I like that the book has both a reductionist derivation of consciousness from first principles (if in a hand-wavy way), but that the motivation and inspiration for doing so seems to be from a more holist angle. I think there's a good chance that there's a way of looking at actual brains that aligns rather well with Hofstadter' view.