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A review by ninj
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
5.0
The book mostly concerns itself with self-reference, strange loops, the notion of self and consciousness. Whether in a person, a machine, or a 'system'. To this end, in the 700+ (dense) pages, there's a slew of "here's a bunch of axioms, see these theorems be deduced, and what does this say about the completeness and consistency of our system and what it can express?"
Not going to lie, it was a much slower read than I was expecting, and a bit of a slog through the mathematical sections, but it was oh-so-rewarding. So much interesting stuff, even the bits trying to explain about 'computers' to an audience of 1979. And there were digressions into music, into art, into language, into pattern recognition, into DNA and genetics...
And even better, when it feels like he's jumped off on a tangent to some new (yet still fascinating) idea, he then relates it back to the earlier chapters and you can see this whole bigger picture that he's constructing.
Wholeheartedly recommend.
Not going to lie, it was a much slower read than I was expecting, and a bit of a slog through the mathematical sections, but it was oh-so-rewarding. So much interesting stuff, even the bits trying to explain about 'computers' to an audience of 1979. And there were digressions into music, into art, into language, into pattern recognition, into DNA and genetics...
And even better, when it feels like he's jumped off on a tangent to some new (yet still fascinating) idea, he then relates it back to the earlier chapters and you can see this whole bigger picture that he's constructing.
Wholeheartedly recommend.