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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

#281

Post by interfixus »

appleflaxen wrote: post #203
interfixus wrote: post #160

The Tortoise. Not Tortoise . Author doesn't seem to have delved too deeply into this unique book.

I haven't read the book. Can you elaborate on why the definite article is an important aspect of how the book is written or interpreted?

It's not the definite article per se. It's just that The Tortoise is specifically The Tortoise all throught the book, just as is in Lewis Carroll. Not getting that, I don't really believe anyone could have been getting the spirit of the book at all, no matter how all my downvoters may feel about it.

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

#282

Post by gerdesj »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #101
brudgers wrote: post #50

My first GEB, I traded for a complete works of Shakespeare. The second is sitting on a shelf alongside Fluid Analogies . Thinking about the GEB phenomenon today, boggles my mind. Sure it won a Pulitzer. But it was a best seller. That's how different the world was...non-fiction could be thick and highly technical and sell in volume to the general public...it didn't need to be a new journalistic summary or popular hist…

The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose was a bestseller just recently and I found that impossible to read even with a graduate degree in Physics.

Mr Penrose does not pander to anyone when he writes. You get the whole lot and that's the way I like it as a civilian. TR2R was published 2006 so not recently.

I will admit to getting a bit bamboozled quite often ...

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

#283

Post by jonhendry18 »

theNJR wrote: post #259
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…

Do you literally mean skip to page 300 and begin?

I would assume the idea is to find a chapter or section start around that point.

Maybe Chapter X, "Levels of Description, and Computer Systems" on page 285. Or Chapter XI, "Brains and Thoughts" on 337.

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

#284

Post by michaelmrose »

core-questions wrote: post #208
schoen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Benatar is the most famous exponent of the opposing view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism Edit: though several weaker views are more common in animal rights advocacy, for instance that being born in order to be raised for food is not a benefit to an animal, that being born in order to be raised for food in a factory farm is not a benefit to an animal, or th…

This is such a patently ridiculous, self-defeating viewpoint. Simple teleology defeats it, in the sense that everyone who holds this view will probably die childless, and will not be very successful at spreading their views generationally. As for the animals - hey, I said I want them treated decently. I don't extend them the same courtesies as I extend to humans because they're not human, and I don't shed a tear for…

Based on this logic raising kids to eat 9/10 of them after roasting them alive would be better than declining to have kids because you disregard the suffering in some sort of interesting moral arithmetic.

The bigger issue is not that nature of the math but the notion that you believe you can subject the matter to it like what is the answer to 42 + banana.

The simpler answer is that we ought to do less immoral things not to find interesting justifications for doing so.

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

#285

Post by djrobstep »

perl4ever wrote: post #81
stuntkite wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have a simple rule - I don't eat any creature that is sentient enough to choose to be vegan...

So you'll eat humans with intellectual disabilities?

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

#286

Post by perl4ever »

djrobstep wrote: post #285
perl4ever wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a simple rule - I don't eat any creature that is sentient enough to choose to be vegan...

So you'll eat humans with intellectual disabilities?

If a logical statement is true, it does not imply the inverse is true, but the contrapositive.

Here is a refresher: https://www.varsitytutors.com/hotmath/hotmath_help/topics/co...

Also, who says the intellectually disabled can't be vegans?

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

#287

Post by westoncb »

core-questions wrote: post #170
BadThink6655321 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“... but nobody I know has actually managed to finish it.“ I’ve read it cover to cover, twice. It’s not a bad book, but it would have helped if he had used the Lambda calculus. YMMV.

Would that have helped the non-mathematicians that read it? I'm in that camp and never quite grasped the whole Lambda thing. (Maybe you know of something I could read that would fix that?)

Best resource I've found is a book called "Introduction to Functional Programming through Lambda Calculus": https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Functional-Programming-C...

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

#288

Post by tejasmanohar »

stuntkite wrote: post #31
audunw wrote: post #29

I read and finished GEB first, and then read 'I am a Strange Loop'. I think the trick to reading GEB is to not take it so seriously. You can skim sections, you can skip parts, you don't have to understand everything, not everything has to make sense. I think the author here misses that when he complains such about the quality of the metaphors. They're not meant to help understand, as much as being there to give a vag…

I definitely think GEB is important to getting into IAASL, which is why after I got into the book a bit I put it down and really made an effort to get into GEB. IAASL can totally be read on it's own, but I think it's fair to say you at least want to have a copy of GEB around to look at while you're reading it. I can't recommend that course enough too. I guess I couldn't find the book on my own. So anyone that can, gr…

What's IAASL?

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

#289

Post by ludston »

optimuspaul wrote: post #166
deepaksurti wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>takes a certain bent to put the effort into reading it Years back, I scanned through a few pages and realized it needed effort as you mention. OTOH, I think there are 2 kinds of great books: one which just suck you into their world and other which demand effort/tax to pay to immerse in that world. The former are incredible books, while the latter are still great. I found `On Lisp` by PG in the same latter category…

I find the latter to be too tedious usually. If they don't at least start out as the former then the latter will never be finished by me. I think that those two kinds are poles of a spectrum and I believe there is a falloff point not too far past the middle that I find acceptable. I think it is interesting you say the one end is incredible but the other end is "still great". Does that mean you enjoy them less?

> Does that mean you enjoy them less?

Enjoyment is not the point. I am a different person because of reading GEB, and my coding style changed because of reading On Lisp. With internalisation and comprehension, the first kind of book will change the way that you think forever. This kind of book is going to be a boring if you are unable understand the concepts that it is trying to communicate.

If these concepts are going to change you forever it might take some reflection (i.e. if you continue perusing the entire book at "reading speed" you will hit a point where you no longer understand what the author is talking about due to not sufficiently internalising the earlier material.)

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

#290

Post by sriku »

nabla9 wrote: post #41
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…

> think he was 24? I think it's pretty incredible considering his age. This makes sense. I read the book at age of 20 or so, and it made me to change my life and change my career path. It's very playful, it informs, connects and educates. I think older and more cynical me might not have enjoyed it so much. I think "Metamagical Themes" and the "Fluid concepts and analogies" are his best books although GEP had the larg…

This parallels its influence on me as well. In particular FCaCA has been a good source to learn how to narrow down problems so they can be tackled without diluting the original essence of the problem. Masterful treatment in my opinion.

I still think Hofstadter's "old school AI" thought processes warrant more attention in today's DL frenzy than they get. His books have been a great source of very interesting questions including style transfer (he dealt with fonts in "Letter Spirit"). It was also the inspiration behind some early experiments using n-nets [1] (shameless plug)

[1] https://blog.imaginea.com/deep-type/

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