[HN Gopher] Godel, Escher, Bach: an in-depth explainer
___________________________________________________________________
Godel, Escher, Bach: an in-depth explainer
Author : behnamoh
Score : 158 points
Date : 2022-09-13 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.alignmentforum.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.alignmentforum.org)
| adamnemecek wrote:
| The underlying idea is the idea of fixed points (aka spectra,
| diagonalizations, embedding, invariants, braids). By fixed point
| I mean something like the "Lawvere's fixed point theorem".
| https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Lawvere%27s+fixed+point+theore...
|
| I have a linkdump on this https://github.com/adamnemecek/adjoint
|
| I also have a discord https://discord.gg/mr9TAhpyBW
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Maybe an ELI5 of "fixed points"?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| General definition (courtesy of the wiki): A fixed point
| (sometimes shortened to fixpoint, also known as an invariant
| point) is a value that does not change under a given
| transformation.
|
| So x is a fixed point of a function f if f(x) = x. This can
| be generalized to various kinds of things in mathematics, but
| as an algebraic example: f(x) = x^2
|
| 1 and 0 are fixed points: f(1) = 1^2 = 1
| f(0) = 0^2 = 0
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_(mathematics)
| adamnemecek wrote:
| A solution of any computational problem.
| dinobones wrote:
| Am I the only one who did not find this book that interesting? I
| studied CS so it just felt like reading my class textbooks again,
| except with random trippy stories in between that try to shoehorn
| theory into a poor metaphor.
|
| The fundamentals of CS (strings, automata, graphs) are elementary
| building blocks. This is by design. You can apply them to almost
| anything. Almost everything "is a graph", or "recursion" if you
| formulate them to be so.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Middle ground opinion here. I found roughly the first third of
| GEB interesting. It's mind-expanding to think about self-
| reference and recursive structure in the context of all the
| other fields besides computer science, like natural language,
| music, art. GEB is a fun exploration of that for the first few
| chapters... but it doesn't get better after that, after a while
| it just keeps doing the same things and repeating the same
| stuff, and becomes a chore rather than fun to get through.
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| I read it before studying cs and I thought it was fascinating
| and made me want to study it. After studying it at the grad
| school level I re read it and found the book somewhat pedantic.
| It's a bit like the black swan in the regard: it package
| advanced under grad level stem topics with colorful anecdotes
| and musings.
| climate-code wrote:
| The point isn't that everything is recursive - the point is
| that systems that are recursive / self-referential cause
| breakdowns in logic (they are incomplete).
|
| This is a deep philosophical insight - it rhymes with the
| Buddhist idea of no-self - the problems that arise because we
| hold onto a false sense of self.
| scrame wrote:
| It was a breakthrough tome when it came out, and covers a lot
| more than truth tables.
|
| Its as much a weird work of nerd art than a manual, like _whys
| guide to ruby_.
| davesque wrote:
| I've read GEB over many years rather in the way someone would
| read the Bible. I pick it up from time to time and enjoy chewing
| on one or two chapters of material.
|
| But I've yet to figure out if the book actually has a specific
| thesis. I know it's all about the power of interpretation and the
| way in which interpreting a formal system as self-referencing has
| the effect of completely blowing up the intended design of that
| system. But can someone sum up how this connects to consciousness
| beyond the obvious way in which consciousness plays the role of
| the interpreter? Or is that itself the thesis of the book? Or
| maybe that consciousness is the originator of self-reference?
|
| Bottom line is that I think the thesis can be summed up in a few
| sentences, but apparently it takes a whole 800 page book to get
| to the point. Would love other people's thoughts on what that
| point is ultimately. By the way, as salty as I sound about it, I
| love GEB. So don't get me wrong :).
| mav88 wrote:
| The central thesis of GEB is this: what is a self? From the
| preface of the 20th anniversary edition:
|
| "GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate
| beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and
| how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone
| or a puddle?"
| mberning wrote:
| It is interesting to me that the author would start at the
| materialist assumption. Most people take it as a "given", but
| I have softened to the idea that maybe it is not a correct or
| complete way of viewing things.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Metamagical Themas is worth checking out for that style of
| reading as it is a compilation of his essays. One can pick and
| choose any to read but there's overarching themes that bring
| them together too.
| scrame wrote:
| 100%, not just the collection of columns, but that he has
| postscripts for it. He manahes to keep things accessible over
| a few columns rather than the overly sprawling GEB (which
| I've read a few times, and still revisit pieces) or his later
| personal works, which involve a lot of personal grief in the
| guise of discussions of cognitive studies.
| sdwr wrote:
| Haven't read it in a decade (and only once!), but I'd say its
| about how self-reference, and roles + perspectives _are_
| consciousness. The exception proves the rule, getting into the
| mind-bending edge cases exposes the typical mental framing. A
| bit like Leonardo exploring his eye muscles with a blunt pin.
|
| Godel, quines, the phonograph ship of theseus stuff, Bach
| harmonies, all the self-aware dialogues. He's looking for the
| vital spark, the thing that makes us greater than the sum of
| parts. But he can't capture the essence (who can?), and settles
| for running around the outskirts.
| Rygian wrote:
| You may want to read I Am A Strange Loop, which clarifies the
| main thesis in the lines that self-reference is a precursor of
| consciousness iirc.
| pfarrell wrote:
| In the forward of which, Hofstadter says he could have called
| the book, _" I" is a Strange Loop_ referring to the concept
| of "I-ness", but he found it too clunky.
| chromaton wrote:
| Yes, the later editions have a foreword which explains what the
| book is about: Hofstader's theory that consciousness arises
| from self reference.
| scrame wrote:
| I think of it more as a survey of a bunch of disciplines, and
| some hopeful hypothesis of future AI research. He writes in an
| accessible way and touches DNA, poetry, fractals, video
| feedback, topographical systems, just... a whole bunch of
| things.
|
| It is for sure reaching, but his core conceit is about pattern
| recognition and emergent behavior and he throws everything he's
| got at the wall there through the eyes of his interests because
| he KNOWS there is something there, even if Godel could describe
| it in a 19 page paper decades before.
|
| That some of this is obvious in hindsight almost 50 years later
| does not discredit the bizarrely singular nature of his effort,
| maybe the same way Seinfeld seems corny now.
| pvarangot wrote:
| The book is about... should I call it golemization? the
| emergence of a being from a summation of non-being things.
|
| Few people get it like that and I think it's a problem with the
| book. It's taken as more of a funny and poignant popular
| science dive into some aspects of logic and computability.
| Hofstadter expands on "I Am a Strange Loop" which I think you
| should read if you are interested into what was his take with
| GEB.
| danbmil99 wrote:
| An incredible piece of work. Shaped my life trajectory in many
| ways. Introduced me to thinkers like Daniel Dennett and Stanislaw
| Lem.
|
| Every generation or so a book comes along that, in retrospect,
| seems almost clairvoyant. This is one of those books.
| pjmorris wrote:
| I was introduced to both Dennett and Lem through 'The Mind's I:
| Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul', an anthology edited
| by Hofstadter and Dennett that I chanced upon in the university
| library. I recognized Hofstadter from GEB. I found 'I' very
| digestible, I admit that I still haven't finished GEB. It
| beckons me from the bookshelf.
| svat wrote:
| IMO, to read GEB for its content would be missing the point: what
| I think is the greatest thing about the book is that it's simply,
| purely, Hofstadter having _fun_. The linked post says "GEB is
| _really_ idiosyncratic in a way no one can imitate ", but I'd put
| it as: it's a deeply personal book. The author's personality
| shines through in a way I had not encountered before in a
| mathematics text, and so the book was a revelation for me.
|
| Hofstadter's actual thesis/intent with the book, and what he has
| to say about Godel numbering (note: the book goes over Godel's
| theorem and some implications, but Hofstadter's real interest is
| less in Godel's theorem than in the proof technique--Godel
| numbering--that Godel used, because he is tickled by the self-
| reference), or Escher or Bach for that matter, are not really
| what make the book most worthwhile. What matters is the marriage
| of form and content, the perfect puns that seem to be set up
| several hundred pages apart, the way you'd be reading another
| dialogue before suddenly realizing that the lines are spelling
| out an acrostic, the satisfaction of things working themselves
| out perfectly (even the puns) (a feeling similar to the
| satisfying tying-together of the plots of certain novels, some of
| Wodehouse's included), and so on.
|
| Very few authors can write about technical topics in a way their
| personality shines through. (Knuth is another IMO, except with
| the personality staying in second place to the technical content,
| while with Hofstadter it's the other way around!)
|
| (Or non-technical writing: did you know about Hofstadter's
| translation of _Eugene Onegin_? He learnt Russian just to be able
| to read and translate that poem (see
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/r...
| https://www.tralalit.de/en/2018/07/25/a-tale-of-two-or-so-tr...
| https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/pml1/onegin/ for the
| story, and
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/09/12/r...
| for the very negative NYT review) and the result is amazing for
| exactly the reasons the reviewer complains about: yes it can't
| stand alone and it's best read alongside a "real" translation say
| Falen's, but throughout you can see Hofstadter having fun with
| his word games, and somehow his personality shines through even
| in just the way he's choosing to translate Pushkin; it's so
| amazing how he manages to have so many things just work out.
| "Till his creditors cast their nyet's")
| jll29 wrote:
| Well said.
|
| The original review post focuses on Godel, but you cannot truly
| review GEB without Escher and Bach. Yes, self-referentiality is
| a key theme of Hofstadter, but also recursion, symmetry and the
| foreground/background ambiguity in visual arts and music, after
| all the whole book is essentially a recursive, self-similiar
| poem (alternating chapters with prose and dialogues, one
| dialogue has palindrome form).
|
| Despite that I disagree about his fundamental view of AI,
| namely that AI is an emergent epiphenomenon, it is still the
| most-read and most-appreciated book ever for me. I read it
| first in German and then in English, and given the playfulness
| with form versus function/content, it is also the best-
| translated work that I have ever encountered. I'm grateful that
| I bought it when I was sixteen, simply because it was mentioned
| in a computer magazine and in a completely different context,
| so I got curious. I know many people that deeply appreciate it,
| or that went into AI careers because of it.
| patcon wrote:
| I've never read it, but I can tell it has something deep to
| say, due to have channeling the knowledge learnings into the
| production of the knowledge object has brought so much joy and
| intrigue and life-changing epiphanies to readers. I mean, there
| must be some deep truth to the content, if the execution of
| said content (in the form of the book) is so touching to so
| many people... :)
| craggyjaggy wrote:
| Maybe one day I'll try reading it again and actually finish it,
| but so far I couldn't do it. Everything is fascinating and mind
| blowing don't get me wrong, but I feel like there is always this
| weird pretentious atmosphere going on. I don't know how to
| describe it, but by the end of the first half reading GEB was not
| fun anymore.
| mejutoco wrote:
| You can skip the alternating socratic parts and it is much
| lighter :P I think Zen and the art of motorcycle repair has a
| similar structure with Socratic dialogs interspersed.
| scrame wrote:
| It is for sure pretentious, he's a cloistered academic classic
| music nerd that appreciates art exclusively through rigid
| structure. He's also aware of that and tries to explore that.
|
| The second half is weird too, because it describes the academic
| work he does in the future, but is a stab in the dark compared
| to the documentarian aspect of the first half.
|
| Think of it like forming a hypothesis:
|
| GEB: This is what we can see.
|
| EGB: This is what I think it means.
| andybak wrote:
| I've never understood why people think it's pretentious. It
| joyous and innocent. It's someone laying out the shiny baubles
| they love and inviting anyone passing to take a look.
| fredgrott wrote:
| The real neat thing is if you compare the full series from the
| author of GEB to the famous math person named Penrose as they
| both cover different sides of the same argument and at times
| beautiful math as well.
|
| Short take...our reality is a mesh between two different math
| desc, one is micro and one is not. The only problem is we still
| have no idea how nature bridges between those two different
| mathematic systems and that leads us down some very interesting
| rabbit holes:
|
| 1. String Theory and multiple worlds, except they are on micro
| basis, i.e. you cannot see them even with an electron microscope.
|
| 2. Tim travel at electron part level but not atom level.
|
| among other interesting things.
| spindle wrote:
| There was a very good (charitable) takedown of some of the
| content of GEB referenced on Hacker News a few months ago, but I
| can't find it :-( Can anyone help please?
| jstanley wrote:
| > Godel's Incompleteness Theorem: any sufficiently rich formal
| system, together with an interpretation, has strings which are
| true but unprovable.
|
| This is only half of it!
|
| Godel's Incompleteness Theorem states that any sufficiently rich
| formal system, together with an interpretation, _either_ has
| strings which are true but unprovable _or_ has strings which are
| provable but untrue. Either is possible! In practice people
| prefer to have true things that can 't be proven rather than
| provable things that are untrue. But either is possible.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Careful lest you be shot with a crab cannon.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Is there a distinction between saying a system has something
| that is provable and untrue and saying the system is self
| contradictory (and the more generalized layman interpretation
| that the system is wrong).
| layer8 wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistency. Under the
| syntactic definition of consistency, a self-contradiction
| simply means that a particular statement and its logical
| negation can both be proved in the system. That doesn't say
| anything about the truth of the statement.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| How can a statement that is unprovable be true?
|
| I always had the impression that unprovable means you could add
| either the statement or its negation as an axiom, and both
| resulting systems are as consistent as the system you started
| with
| gerdesj wrote:
| "This statement is false".
|
| GEB is a marvellous work that is accessible to anyone with
| reasonably good school grade maths. I chanced upon it by
| accident in the school library one day and was hooked after a
| few pages.
|
| Anyway the crux of the matter is that you can very carefully
| construct a statement about a system that can't be either
| proven or disproven by that system! I don't have anything
| like the formal knowledge to really get to grips with it and
| the discussions on infinities and so on are pretty mind
| blowing. However, you feel that DH is imparting glimpses into
| the sheer beauty of the ideas he covers.
|
| Wait 'til you discover what ricercar and quining is all about
| - bloody lovely. Just read it but take your time. There is
| something in there for everyone. You often get told by clever
| people about the links between maths, music and art. Mr H
| easily gives the best argument I've ever seen that attests to
| that being true, whilst giving your brain a right good
| kicking.
|
| There was a Dutchman, a German and an Austrian who walked
| into a book ...
| alimov wrote:
| Read it over the course of a couple months during my
| commute, my back hurt but as you said it was marvelous.
| Kranar wrote:
| >"This statement is false".
|
| Close but not quite as that's an inconsistent statement.
|
| "This statement is unprovable." is the approach Godel takes
| and eliminates the inconsistency. Either that statement is
| true, in which case it's unprovable, or it's false in which
| case there exists a proof of a false statement.
| scrame wrote:
| The caveat is that it's a rule of _formal systems_. Any
| formal system that can represent multiplication can be shown
| to have unreachable truths or provable falsities.
| Twisol wrote:
| Good question! In this context, we're relating a system of
| proofs to the properties of a desired model. If you start
| from a sufficiently expressive model and try to design a
| proof system where valid proofs correspond to true
| properties, then you will either miss some properties (an
| unproveable truth) or you will have too many proofs
| (proveable falsehoods).
|
| Without biasing for a particular model, we could simply say
| that every sufficiently expressive proof system admits either
| zero models or more than one model.
| fao_ wrote:
| Without a telescope I can't prove to you that andromeda is a
| galaxy, but it is.
| pvarangot wrote:
| So "famous" undecidable statements, which is what you
| mention, are an example of statements that strongly
| opinionated people believe enough that are probably true but
| unprovable. You are probably familiar with the Continuum
| Hypothesis or the Axiom of Choice, the latter being so
| "probably true" in the model that the axioms for set theory
| try to capture that it's usually added as another axiom.
|
| Kruskal's tree theorem is a more interesting example, you
| should look into that. You can prove it undecidable, so you
| can add either it or it's negation like you say, in Peano's
| arithmetic, but you can prove it ZFC or I think even less
| expressive axiomatic systems for set theory.
| shagie wrote:
| Veritasium - Math's Fundamental Flaw
| https://youtu.be/HeQX2HjkcNo
|
| At 13:46 it gets into the "is there a way to prove every
| complete statement?" and furthermore goes into the Godel math
| for "there is no proof for the statement with Godel number g"
| where that statement itself has a number "g".
|
| The entire video is a good watch though.
|
| And the related problem is that with Godel we don't know if
| math is consistent either.
| mreid wrote:
| It might be easiest to give a sense of what "unprovable but
| true" means by way of an imagined example.
|
| Goldbach's conjecture is that "every even number bigger than
| 2 is the sum of exactly two prime numbers", so 4 = 2 + 2, 6 =
| 3 + 3, 8 = 5 + 3, etc.
|
| For this statement to be *true* it just means that every even
| number there must exist two primes that add to that number.
| This is a statement about infinitely many integers.
|
| A *proof* of Goldbach's conjecture consists of a finite
| number of formal reasoning steps that start with some axioms
| and end up at the statement of the result.
|
| To this day, it seems as though Goldbach's conjecture is
| true. It holds for every number we've been able to test.
| However, no one has proved it is true or false yet (or proved
| that it is unprovable).
|
| The proof of Godel's result's involves very carefully
| formalizing what statements and proofs mean so that they can
| be encoded as statements about arithmetic. He then shows
| there is a statement with encoding G that says "The statement
| with encoding G cannot be proved" - if it is true, then it
| cannot be proved.
|
| It's kind of confusing at first, but there is an easier way
| to get an intuition why there might be true statements that
| cannot be proved. Think of each statement about the natural
| numbers as a subset where each number in the subset makes the
| statement true. There are uncountably many subsets of the
| natural numbers (by Cantor's diagonalization argument).
| Proofs are finite chains of finite statements so there are
| only countably infinitely many of these. Therefore there must
| be subsets/statements that are true that do not have a
| matching proof.
|
| The approach that Godel's proof takes is not too different to
| the above argument - it is essentially a diagonalization
| argument - the complexity is in making the encoding of
| statements are numbers very precise.
| bedman12345 wrote:
| True, but if you add too many axioms, the resulting set of
| axioms will not be computable anymore. If you allow your set
| of axioms to not be computable you can of course just use the
| set of statements that are true for whatever model of the
| natural numbers you have in mind. The whole point is that
| it's not possible to write down any sensible definition of
| what natural numbers are supposed to be.
| black_knight wrote:
| > How can a statement that is unprovable be true?
|
| If you are a platonist and believe in some preferred model
| where every statement is decided this makes perfect sense.
| For the rest of us, this just means that in a sufficiently
| complex system there will be undecided statements. Which is
| not such a big surprise - but a rather awesome technical
| exercise!
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| Because as soon as you have a system that includes that new
| axiom, _new_ true statements can be created that are not
| provable. It's true for every formal system with any finite
| number of axioms.
| mtreis86 wrote:
| I wonder how experienced the author of GEB is with psychedelics,
| that book always felt fairly trippy to me.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| commitment to the material in that depth is not the product of
| drugs
| widowlark wrote:
| Thank you so much for saying this, I find this misconception
| deeply insulting
| mxkopy wrote:
| It's not an insult. Psychedelics can profoundly change how
| someone perceives things. GEB has that sort profound shift
| in POV that many would associate with psychedelics.
| widowlark wrote:
| The insult is the implication that thinking like this is
| somehow due to use of and exposure to psychedelics. Maybe
| some people need assistance in thinking deeply,
| Hofstadter certainly is not one of them.
| mxkopy wrote:
| Do you think that you feel better than others for not
| taking drugs, and that this superiority is assailed when
| people who take drugs find common ground with one of your
| favorite thinkers? Because that's the only explanation I
| can think of for this blatant assholeishness and
| gatekeeping.
|
| Hofstadter doesn't own thinking about consciousness,
| thinking deeply, or thinking philosophically. As a matter
| of fact these sorts of things, to many people - many more
| than who have even heard of Hofstadter - associate them
| with psychedelics. So it's not unreasonable, it's not an
| insult, to think Hofstadter going pretty deeply into
| questions of meaning, putting mind-bending Escher works
| in his book, referring to the person that wrote GEB as
| different from Hofstadter himself, etc... is psychedelic.
| These are things that most people find eccentric, and
| what psychedelic users find psychedelic.
|
| The only way I could find insult in such comparisons is
| if I felt psychedelics themselves were morally inferior
| or insulting. I would examine that.
| widowlark wrote:
| Oh, to be clear it has nothing to do with morality.
| Similar to someone elses comment above, having the
| experience of thinking you can salsa dance while drunk
| and actually being able to salsa dance are very
| different. In the same way, Someone might gain some
| understanding of H's thinking by taking psychedelics, but
| that does not lead to the same understanding as actually
| processing, imagining and writing the material does. I
| also think you might be devolving a little into flamebait
| here, as it seems you have taken my statements personally
| but they were not directed in any way at you.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| Getting hit in the head can also change how someone
| perceives things. I think the above commenter was
| expressing frustration with the popular notion that
| taking drugs is some sort of shortcut to understanding
| consciousness, dynamic systems, etc
| andybak wrote:
| "Shortcut" is overstating it. It can steer one's thinking
| in a direction that makes those topics seem more relevant
| or interesting. This in itself can be very valuable.
|
| > Getting hit on the head
|
| Well - there _are_ recorded cases of brain damage
| unlocking abilities and aptitudes (albeit with great
| rarity). So probably not recommended.
|
| But rest assured, psychedelics are less painful, cause
| less damage and have a higher probability of beneficial
| effects.
| mxkopy wrote:
| Note that I said "profound change" not "arbitrary
| change". What a faithful argument you've blessed us with.
|
| If you think drinking alcohol or taking cocaine has the
| same mental effects as psychedelics, then, I guess all I
| can say is don't talk about what you don't know.
| patcon wrote:
| (upvoted!) can you say more about this sensibility of
| yours? I'm genuinely intrigued, as I haven't heard a take
| like that before :)
|
| At risk of asking a leading question: is it some idea that
| deep truth should come from reason rather than the noise
| and chaos of psychedelics? (I don't do them myself, but
| hold them in very high regard as a force in the world)
| widowlark wrote:
| I have no problems with psychedelics or their use. I took
| issue with the implication that they are needed in order
| to think in the way Hofstadter does - it's kind of like
| asking what flippers Michael Phelps uses when he swims in
| the olympics.
| mtreis86 wrote:
| I didn't mean to imply that and certainly don't think it
| is required. My question had little to do with the
| content and much more to do with the style, and the
| author's intended effects upon the reader.
| widowlark wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying!
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| Your question is loaded in a different way than you might
| have anticipated, it presupposes that truth DOES come
| from psychedelics as well as from reason.
|
| It's true that many people feel a deep connection to and
| understanding of consciousness during a psychedelics
| trip. Did they actually gain any knowledge about how
| their own brains work in the same way that a
| neuroscientist or ML expert might understand it? I
| contend that they did not, even if they feel that they
| did.
|
| In a similar way a drunk might suddenly feel that he has
| the ability to dance. That's hardly a replacement for
| salsa classes.
|
| Of course there are exceptions. Many brilliant people
| take psychedelics and credit them with breakthroughs in
| their fields, that can't be ignored. But you'll notice
| that its always _in their field_, ie they were already
| thinking about a problem and psychedelics offered them a
| new perspective.
| ozay wrote:
| He doesn't say it was written while high. He is wondering if
| H knew the effects of psychedelics and maybe tried to
| replicate the feeling in the reader.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2245
|
| There are several famous mathematicians known for their avid
| use of amphetamines.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Not to mention the profound impact of LSD on the founders
| of modern computing.
| ozay wrote:
| Amphetamines aren't psychedelics. Like nicotine or caffeine
| they increase performance.
| cdot2 wrote:
| And there are many who arent. I doubt there's a statistical
| corollation.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| It just shows you can be an avid drug user and still make
| enormous contributions to STEM. It only takes n=1 to
| provide a counterexample to an absolute like "drugs never
| produce anything substantial."
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| That's quite the strawman, I don't know anyone who says
| that. And if they did I would ask them if they drank
| coffee or if they were aware that a good chunk of young
| professionals are on ADHD medication
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > commitment to the material in that depth is not the
| product of drugs
|
| You think this is saying drugs sometimes lead to
| commitment? It sure reads like an absolute statement to
| me.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| Yes that is an absolute statement (and maybe an incorrect
| one!) but it's scope is psychedelics in relation to GEB,
| not all possible drugs in all possible situations
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Why read this when GEB is its own in-depth explainer?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| So is XKCD but it has the explainer site / wiki.
| karaterobot wrote:
| For one thing, I read GEB and found it difficult to follow. No
| doubt there is more in GEB than in this article, but without
| this less lengthy summary I couldn't get at it, life and
| attention being what they are. If I returned to the book now, I
| bet I'd understand more of what was already in it.
| scrame wrote:
| One word: double-acrostic.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Is there a good book that is similar in spirit, but doesn't
| require the maturity of GEB? I know an 8th grader that would be a
| great target, but I don't know if they have the
| mathematical/logical maturity to get through it.
| pseudosudoer wrote:
| While I'm not sure it requires "less maturity", DH released a
| subsequent book titled "I am a strange loop" which is an
| attempt to condense his ideas from GEB.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Try Raymond Smullyan. He has books at a range of levels of
| accessibility; I'm not sure if there's anything great for your
| 8th grader, but I remember first getting into _The Lady or the
| Tiger?_ as a teen.
| Sharlin wrote:
| _Sophie 's World_, which is about the history of Western
| philosophy (well, at least on one level. On another level, it's
| a story about a girl who starts to receive mysterious letters).
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by "a similar spirit" I suppose.
| One thing Hofstadter didn't like about GEB was he felt too many
| people didn't see his central theme among the many other ideas
| there.
|
| His 2007 book, "I Am A Strange Loop" is a bit of an answer to
| this. It's mostly the same ideas in GEB about the self and
| strange loops, but without all the meandering and interludes.
| It's been a while but I remember it being less logic/mathy than
| GEB. I did enjoy it.
|
| But the meandering and the interludes are part of the enjoyment
| of GEB. So if you're looking for another book to capture that
| spirit of GEB, I'm drawing a blank, hopefully someone else
| knows one.
|
| Barely related recommendation, but I remember reading "A Brief
| History of Time" around that age. Very doable for a young teen
| if they have a passion for that sort of topic.
| gsliepen wrote:
| I read the book for the first time at that age, and I
| definitely enjoyed it. While I knew some things were over my
| head, a lot of concepts are actually explained well enough that
| a 14 year old can grasp it, and the dialogues are a lot of fun.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance comes to mind
| immediately. It works on several levels and is very accessible
| as a result. If you wanted to stray from the spirit of GEB into
| narrative prose, there are a number of books I could recommend,
| especially in science fiction.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| ZMM is a great philosophy intro book. It's captivating and
| will get you in that "deep thinking mode" while never getting
| too overly dense. The actual core philosophy is a bit meh,
| but it really doesn't matter since the book is loaded with
| general good insight.
|
| +1
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| I liked the book, but didn't like Pirsig in it. I felt
| sorry for him for sure, but i'm not sure I could understand
| him and his reasoning for things.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Think on These Things by Jiddu Krishnamurti
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Every socially awkward person who obsesses about their intellect
| is an in-depth explainer of Goedel, Escher, Bach. It's a fun
| read, and clever enough, but the relation between the work of the
| three is pretty shallow, and if you understand only what the book
| contains, you haven't gotten very deep into their valuable work.
| The book is more an act of self-indulgence on the author's part,
| or at best a tribute to the brilliance of his subjects, than a
| profound intellectual achievement in itself.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| is here somebody who also got the impression that the book is
| somewhat overrated?
| tootallgavin wrote:
| G.E.B is hegelian philosophy without one mention to Hegel and
| more mechanic than organic
|
| Anyone read the Phenomenology of Spirit and notice the same
| ideas?
| scrame wrote:
| I love this comment.
| svnt wrote:
| The ideas and what a modern reading brings to them can be
| difficult to disentangle. A more charitable take might be that
| because emergence is fractal that there are uncountable ways
| not involving Hegel to arrive at and express a similar
| underlying idea.
| nathias wrote:
| GEB is one of the best works of modern philosophy, I don't think
| the reviewer gets the point, the story of formal systems and the
| structures that determine them are used as an analog for other
| systems that aren't formal to try and shed light on the process
| of ontological emergence of intelligence. If you are at least a
| bit interested in philosophy and computation, you should read GEB
| at least once.
| KhoomeiK wrote:
| I almost upvoted and then noticed it links to the AI Alignment
| Forum. Even a broken clock...
| Lwepz wrote:
| For those interested, here is a talk by Gemma De La Cuevas that
| tackles those fascinating tangled hierarchies:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q2gF1PImZw
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-13 23:00 UTC)