[deleted]
Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
261–270 of 348 posts
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#262There's a pretty big clue on page 9 that the book is supposed to be read backwards and upside down, starting at the end of the last dialogue.
I know I found Hofstadters easter egg...
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely disagree that TAOCP is a "reference work" or that invariably there are "by now better places to start". If you care to learn about any of the topics in TAOCP, to the level of detail it contains, it is usually one of the best places to read. Knuth has taken the entire mass of published literature on the topic, passed it through his "interestingness" filter, and boiled it down to usually the best writing o…
not a good read on its topics. That is a different claim and also one I didn't make.
Fair enough. BTW I do agree with your original comment that started this thread, that GEB and TAOCP are nothing alike. I greatly enjoy the experience of reading both of them, but for very different reasons.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
My humble suggestion(s) to make "favorites" more useful (and hopefully more used): 1. add the ability to "favorite" from the front page. I rarely "favorite" anything, because I grew accustomed to using "upvote" as the mechanism to save stories. I would switch, but that extra little bit of friction of needing to click through first, means I stick with my old habit. 2. Add "favorite" for comments as well. 3. (maybe) -…
You can favorite comments but you have to click their timestamp first. It's really hidden. I think most people don't know about the feature. dang: if you get rid of it please don't do so w/o notice so that those of us who do use it can export the links first.
You can favorite comments but you have to click their timestamp first. It's really hidden.
Heh, there ya go. I'm one of the people who uses the favorite feature (albeit sporadically) and I didn't even know you could do that.
Yeah, surfacing the UI element for "favorite" to make it easier to find would, IMO, make it a lot more usable.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#265> The dialogues are a big part of why I originally struggled with the book: they are meandering and long, and they regularly outstay their welcome.
I would disagree. I found the dialogues absolutely beautiful and a big part of what makes this book so enjoyable.
I think it would be a mistake to treat this book as a textbook whose goal is to convey some material in the most efficient way.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#266Read GEB when I was 20. Absolutely loved it, and it had a big impact on my choice of studies and career. Since then I've had a lurking fear that I'd be grossly disappointed if I picked it up again now. Your review indicates I should probably let it be. Thanks!
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#267There's a discussion in GEB about mystery/detective novels, and how the physical fact of seeing that you're near the end of the book leaks information about the state of the plot to you. He muses - what if you inserted some number of blank pages at the end, so you weren't sure where the end was? But no, that's too easy - you might flip through and see them. What about Lorem Ipsum text? Well, that's better, but still…
So, I’ve never finished Infinite Jest. My father once told me that’s okay— it ends in the middle.
Cloud Atlas employs the same structure deliberately, with wonderful narrative impact. You have to climb up the mountain in order to climb back down.
I do think GEB is the same way. The first half of the book is the climb. The second half is merely the question, what can we see from way up here?
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#268There's a discussion in GEB about mystery/detective novels, and how the physical fact of seeing that you're near the end of the book leaks information about the state of the plot to you. He muses - what if you inserted some number of blank pages at the end, so you weren't sure where the end was? But no, that's too easy - you might flip through and see them. What about Lorem Ipsum text? Well, that's better, but still…
That seems exactly like what House of Leaves does. The actual book ends maybe not even halfway through the pages, but there are footnotes upon footnotes, and footnotes within footnotes, then a huge appendix at the end.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you sum up your experience reading the book? Or did you try to sum up the critique we're discussing here? If it's the latter you failed.
The book. Apologies, you are right, should have been clearer. I think the other comments at the time were also about the book, not the article.
So now we have to consider the specter of someone writing an overly verbose review of something that reduces to "tl;dr". Someone might summarize the review by writing "tl;dr: tl;dr". Or they might express the same thing, but overly verbosely, so someone might summarize their response by writing "tl;dr: tl;dr: tl;dr". In general, if N "tl;dr"s is a valid sentiment, and any valid sentiment can be expressed overly verbosely, then N+1 "tl;dr"s are a valid sentiment, so by induction any positive integer repetition of "tl;dr"s is valid. However, there exists some number L such that L repetitions of "tl;dr" is itself too long to express the necessary point, and someone who didn't read it would want a summary, the most succinct of which would presumably be "tl;dr: tl;dr nested L times". This meta "tl;dr" itself might be expressed overly verbosely, of course...