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4.31 AVERAGE
4.31 AVERAGE
"Godel, Escher, Bach" is an exploration of how consciousness can arise from inanimate matter. It's an intellectual tour-de-force, covering a fantastically diverse range of subjects including mathematics, art, music, molecular biology, neuroscience, Zen Buddhism, extraterrestrial life, computer science, and artificial intelligence. Structurally, the book is unusual too, interspersing each chapter with a fictitious dialogue between Lewis Carroll-inspired characters, to provide a playful introduction to the ideas to be discussed next. Each chapter builds on the knowledge introduced in the previous ones, and Hofstadter generally explains himself clearly. However, the book is long, and so many different ideas are introduced that at times I found myself struggling to keep on top of them all. Overall, however, a fascinating read.
I was first given this book by my college physics professor, after he burst into the classroom really excitedly yelling about the Supercollider. This was after the first run of the Large Hadron Collider, and the physics community was freaking out because a) they HADN'T opened a huge world destroying black hole in the process, and b) the results from the experiment could possibly lead to the discovery of the Higgs Boson. And one really intense debate lead to another and eventually we were all yelling theories at each other about how artificial intelligence could successfully mimic biologic systems, and eventually our professor runs back to his office and comes back with a really worn, falling-apart copy of this book saying that it was something we all should read. I was the only student that took him up on it, because I really liked reading about science and philosophy intertwining. I gave it back before I was finished, because he was one of my faovurite professors and I didn't want to steal his books from him. So I bought my own, and it's one of the books I constantly go back and reread.
Read this book for a second time. It definitely drags on in certain sections and I wish there was a little more emphasis on evidence-based neuroscience (although understandably a lot of that didn't exist at the time of writing). The AI sections feel dated now too, but everything to do with mathematics and formal logic and the incredible incredible puns still hold up completely.
slow-paced
This book is fantastic! And to be completely honest, I'm still not 100 percent sure what it's about.
At a high level, the book investigates how strange loops like "This sentence is false". Throughout this investigation, Hofstadter introduces a variety of fun topics including Math, Computer Science, Brains, AI, The Meaning/Type distinction, DNA Transcription/Translation, Subjunctives, Self Reference/Representation, etc...
The book alternated between two formats: 1, chapters enthusiastically explaining the basics of a variety of fields, and 2, silly, but not childish, allegories that further reenforced the topics introduced. Though sometimes the explanations were lengthy, each topic was explained well and often there were several analogies that made things much easier to grasp.
While I did enjoy reading this book, I didn't think it was perfect and there were a few things I had issues with:
* Some of the explanations go on for _just_ a bit too long.
* A few people I talked to about this book that didn't have music backgrounds felt that the basics of music theory were glossed over. One friend didn't get the endlessly rising canon but did understand what Hofstadter meant after seeing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHO3GMJcZZ4 . I personally thought that the music theory was explained well enough but I also was in band for ~10 years.
* Likewise, I thought that he used Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts without explaining them as much as they should've been.
* I write and read a lot of code for my day job and had trouble processing the pseudo-code he wrote in the book. I'm not sure if it was the typeface but I found it hard to parse.
Still, this book was great to read and didn't think that any or all of these things were serious flaws. Everything is was just so well written and delightful.
Fair warning, if you intend to read this it is quite a trek. I consider myself a quick reader and have a solid background in logic/computer science, linguistics, and music and this book still took me a month of deliberate reading to fully process the entire thing.
I don't mean to discourage anyone from reading this book if they're interested - reading this was so fun! - I just feel that you should go into this book with realistic expectations for how much time and energy this will take. Oh! If you do read this book, I recommend buying your own copy (Thanks, Amazon, for the server time here!) and writing all over it.
At a high level, the book investigates how strange loops like "This sentence is false". Throughout this investigation, Hofstadter introduces a variety of fun topics including Math, Computer Science, Brains, AI, The Meaning/Type distinction, DNA Transcription/Translation, Subjunctives, Self Reference/Representation, etc...
The book alternated between two formats: 1, chapters enthusiastically explaining the basics of a variety of fields, and 2, silly, but not childish, allegories that further reenforced the topics introduced. Though sometimes the explanations were lengthy, each topic was explained well and often there were several analogies that made things much easier to grasp.
While I did enjoy reading this book, I didn't think it was perfect and there were a few things I had issues with:
* Some of the explanations go on for _just_ a bit too long.
* A few people I talked to about this book that didn't have music backgrounds felt that the basics of music theory were glossed over. One friend didn't get the endlessly rising canon but did understand what Hofstadter meant after seeing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHO3GMJcZZ4 . I personally thought that the music theory was explained well enough but I also was in band for ~10 years.
* Likewise, I thought that he used Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts without explaining them as much as they should've been.
* I write and read a lot of code for my day job and had trouble processing the pseudo-code he wrote in the book. I'm not sure if it was the typeface but I found it hard to parse.
Still, this book was great to read and didn't think that any or all of these things were serious flaws. Everything is was just so well written and delightful.
Fair warning, if you intend to read this it is quite a trek. I consider myself a quick reader and have a solid background in logic/computer science, linguistics, and music and this book still took me a month of deliberate reading to fully process the entire thing.
I don't mean to discourage anyone from reading this book if they're interested - reading this was so fun! - I just feel that you should go into this book with realistic expectations for how much time and energy this will take. Oh! If you do read this book, I recommend buying your own copy (Thanks, Amazon, for the server time here!) and writing all over it.
challenging
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- a perfect marriage of form and function.
- much more to add, over time.
- much more to add, over time.
challenging
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
Less of a properly structured book and more of a Wikipedia rabbit hole- but an interesting one. Our brains aren’t wired to understand recursion and infinity but those concepts are key to how the universe works. So Hofstader tries to explain them by analogy and Escher drawings (for the visual learners)
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced