Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
Dear friends and loved ones,
Please know that while I appreciate that you are thinking of me, every time someone recommends that I read GEB I like to imagine that the person has just burst into flames.
Please know that while I appreciate that you are thinking of me, every time someone recommends that I read GEB I like to imagine that the person has just burst into flames.
It's hard to be succinct in reviewing this book, given how expansive it is. I got here by way of [b:The Magician King|10079321|The Magician King (The Magicians, #2)|Lev Grossman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316177353s/10079321.jpg|13362064]--this is one of the books Julia's read and FTB discusses, and that told me it was worth a look, apparently. I think it gets a reputation for being impossible to understand unless you're already a genius, but the thing is that it's actually really self-contained. You don't have to already know about computer systems, surrealist art, or 18th-century music, because this is meant to be a highly self-referential book. Everything that it's going to talk about it, well, talks about. You don't have to go in with specialised knowledge.
That said, there's a definite density to it and it's not the kind of book you relax into after work. There's mental labour, which is great if you want something you can really chew on, but not everyone does. And my focus definitely waned when things got math-y and Hofstadter wanted us to "play" with TNT theorems. However, these dropped off in the last quarter, and that was also where I thought the book got more interesting and started to better iterate its goals.
I couldn't stop thinking as I read about how 1979 was approximately a millennium ago in computer time. What computers can do has changed so much since this book came out, and AI systems are exponentially more complicated. We still have a lot of the same conversations about their limitations, though, and whether they can be creative without humans as a prime-mover. I'd be curious to know what this would've looked like written in 2016.
That said, there's a definite density to it and it's not the kind of book you relax into after work. There's mental labour, which is great if you want something you can really chew on, but not everyone does. And my focus definitely waned when things got math-y and Hofstadter wanted us to "play" with TNT theorems. However, these dropped off in the last quarter, and that was also where I thought the book got more interesting and started to better iterate its goals.
I couldn't stop thinking as I read about how 1979 was approximately a millennium ago in computer time. What computers can do has changed so much since this book came out, and AI systems are exponentially more complicated. We still have a lot of the same conversations about their limitations, though, and whether they can be creative without humans as a prime-mover. I'd be curious to know what this would've looked like written in 2016.
This is probably the book I've kept longest in the "currently reading" category. I started it in July 2019 and only was able to read a few pages at a time. I'll just go straight off the bat and say this book is NOT FOR EVERYBODY! It's very dense and chaotically structured. Douglas mentions how he refused to let the book be edited before or after release, even though it desperately needs editing.
The book holds many gems of wisdom, insight and creativity but it's like digging through concrete to get to them. The topics it tackles are wide ranging, from mathematics to art and genetics or music. If you are interested in the philosophical aspects of it (what is consciousness and how it relates to the world around us and science/math), I suggest you read "I Am a Strange Loop" (same author) first and come back to this one if you still want more of it.
Strange cookie this one but I overall loved it.
The book holds many gems of wisdom, insight and creativity but it's like digging through concrete to get to them. The topics it tackles are wide ranging, from mathematics to art and genetics or music. If you are interested in the philosophical aspects of it (what is consciousness and how it relates to the world around us and science/math), I suggest you read "I Am a Strange Loop" (same author) first and come back to this one if you still want more of it.
Strange cookie this one but I overall loved it.