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Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

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Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#61

Post by beaconstudios »

chriswarbo wrote: post #37
beaconstudios wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with directly, but if you're more familiar with comp-sci: based on my understanding of Curry-Howard correspondence, I would think it's the logic equivalent of the halting problem. I could be way off-base though, I'd appreciate a mathematician chiming in on whether my intuition is accurate here.

(Caveat: I'm a computer scientist, not a mathematician) The halting problem, and universal computation itself, came directly out of work on incompleteness. Incompleteness is about being unable to prove statements in a particular system; it leaves open the possibility that a more powerful system might be able to prove that statement (but that more powerful system will have its own incompleteness, and so on). Turing go…

the question that fascinates me is - what is the property of a program that makes it undecidable? I've been playing around with the idea of trying to make a program that determines halts/doesn't halt/don't know, given some representation of a program. I'm running into some interesting implications when I incorporate dependent typing, but it feels like there must be something theoretical that's already out there.

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#62

Post by rspeer »

stuntkite wrote: post #21
zerr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be more specific - exactly from what page should one start reading GEB?

It's been about 2 years I think since I did that. Skip the Socratic dialogs basically. I think the course I linked is the same one I went through. He covers it in the first video. Also once you get through the other parts, the Socratic discussions are easy to come back to. You just don't end up in nowhere taxed with his presentation before you really find the book.

Wow, I would recommend exactly the opposite. If you wanted a dry statement of Hofstadter's philosophy, you could read I Am A Strange Loop, but GEB is remarkable for its form, including the dialogues.

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#63

Post by pvg »

jatsign wrote: post #20

Does anyone have a better metaphor, or a link to someplace with a better explanation, of the Incompleteness Theorem?

https://www.amazon.com/Gödels-Proof-Ernest-Nagel/dp/08147583...

Can be read in a couple of hours and you'll know as much about Goedel's work as any GEB reader. Nowadays even comes with a Hofstadter intro but no bulk or talking animals.

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#64

Post by giantsloth »

jason_s wrote: post #30

…well, it would have been, but for some reason I kept struggling to get through it. I thought highly of it, but my secret shame was that my admiration for the book was based mostly on the first two hundred or so pages. It took slogging effort to get myself through the rest, effort sporadically applied over the course of years. I did eventually make my way through the whole thing, but even now, I can’t necessarily be…

You are making a simple assertion that the metaphor was good without any explanation, while the author made a deep and cutting explanation as to why he he believes it’s a terrible metaphor. You’ve made no counter argument.

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#65

Post by stuntkite »

rspeer wrote: post #62
stuntkite wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been about 2 years I think since I did that. Skip the Socratic dialogs basically. I think the course I linked is the same one I went through. He covers it in the first video. Also once you get through the other parts, the Socratic discussions are easy to come back to. You just don't end up in nowhere taxed with his presentation before you really find the book.

Wow, I would recommend exactly the opposite. If you wanted a dry statement of Hofstadter's philosophy, you could read I Am A Strange Loop, but GEB is remarkable for its form, including the dialogues.

Eh, worked for me! YMMV.

I couldn't do the dialogs until I got through the rest. I also enjoyed IAASL a bit more than I enjoyed GEB. Definitely not saying what helped me figure the book out is what everyone should do.

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#66

Post by usrusr »

stuntkite wrote: post #47
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IAASL also has one of the best (and easiest to understand) descriptions of non human sentience-when he talks about why he’s a vegetarian.

I am not a vegan, but his consciousness cone is something I seem to bring up frequently with people. Usually by the end of the conversation I don't quite know why I'm not vegan aside from habit. Last time I brought it up I was eating sushi and talking about how I had decided to quit eating cephalopods because they might be smarter than humans... But then ate pork belly and just didn't really know what I stood for any…

Pigs are awesome and most of them (all except for wild boar) would not be around if not for us eating them. We should strive for avoiding unnecessary hardship and unsustainably high numbers, not for extermination through total disuse.

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#67

Post by chasing »

stuntkite wrote: post #6

I'd owned this book for many years and had a similar experience to OP. But one day someone gave me `I am a Strange Loop`, which I started reading and enjoyed way more. After getting in a little bit Hofstadter makes some apologies for GEB saying it was the sum of work of a very young person. I think he was 24? I think it's pretty incredible considering his age. The things that lead him to thinking critically about con…

The internet says Hofstadter was born in 1945 and GED was published in 1979. ~34 years later?

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#68

Post by arunix »

stuntkite wrote: post #47
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IAASL also has one of the best (and easiest to understand) descriptions of non human sentience-when he talks about why he’s a vegetarian.

I am not a vegan, but his consciousness cone is something I seem to bring up frequently with people. Usually by the end of the conversation I don't quite know why I'm not vegan aside from habit. Last time I brought it up I was eating sushi and talking about how I had decided to quit eating cephalopods because they might be smarter than humans... But then ate pork belly and just didn't really know what I stood for any…

Consider that cephalopods are on the menu of other cephalopods despite their mental powers ...

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#69

Post by stuntkite »

chasing wrote: post #67
stuntkite wrote: post #6

I'd owned this book for many years and had a similar experience to OP. But one day someone gave me `I am a Strange Loop`, which I started reading and enjoyed way more. After getting in a little bit Hofstadter makes some apologies for GEB saying it was the sum of work of a very young person. I think he was 24? I think it's pretty incredible considering his age. The things that lead him to thinking critically about con…

The internet says Hofstadter was born in 1945 and GED was published in 1979. ~34 years later?

Sounds about right? What's your point?

If you're trying to extrapolate his age from the publishing, someone below corrected me. He was 27 when he wrote it. A few years between writing and publishing the first edition lines up.

Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach

#70

Post by adultSwim »

"I realized that I wanted to like the book much more than I actually liked it in practice."

This. Maturing has moved me past books that I "should" like. Communication is important! If it takes you 500 pages of hot air to explain something simple, where will there ever be room for a complex idea? For nuance?

It's embarrassing how a ten minute CPG Grey can be better than many books I've read.

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