This is such a awful book. Pure hipster material.
pats WhatsHisName on head
6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
31–40 of 87 posts
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#32This is such a awful book. Pure hipster material.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
Are you suggesting that Jean-Yves Girard didn't understand the book either?
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#33It's such a shame there isn't a Kindle/ePub/PDF version. I guess I'm off to kill another tree.
What's wrong with killing trees that were grown specifically for paper? You're just taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, helping reduce global climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said "In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will gener…
Killing trees takes CO2 out of the atmosphere? I think you've got this backwards.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#34It's such a shame there isn't a Kindle/ePub/PDF version. I guess I'm off to kill another tree.
Here's a working link to the pdf:
http://www.4shared.com/get/kj6ls_4Z/Godel_Escher_Bach-An_Ete...
No seeders for torrent though, so direct download is the only option.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#35I've been meaning to review GEB on http://hn-books.com -- great, once-in-a-lifetime book. Kind of a cross between a college course, a game, a puzzle, and the work of a madman.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with killing trees that were grown specifically for paper? You're just taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, helping reduce global climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said "In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will gener…
Killing trees takes CO2 out of the atmosphere? I think you've got this backwards.
Growing trees to make them into timber, pulp, etc. takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. As long as you're not growing them to burn them, it's one of the most effective CO2 sequestration methods we have.
77% of tree usage in the US is for timber and pulpwood. Fast-growing species are planted and harvested over a 10-20 year cycle so that as each section is cut down and replanted, another section is maturing. It's both sustainable business and an effective CO2 sink.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#37It's the kind of book you can spend a few days reading or a life time, just like "Zen and the art of motorcycle repair". I've read half of it in 8 years, so maybe it's time to redo the whole process from beginning to end.
Just like ZMM, GED is also the kind of book that tends to split people into those that love it and those that hate it. Personally, I loved GED and hated ZMM. Similarly, I know people who find GED overrated, pompous and shallow.
Yeah, I think it's overrated, pompous and shallow. And I understand it perfectly, having studied the subject (at least the maths part) from real sources.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#38I loved GEB, but since reading it (and jumping in and re-reading parts here and there when it strikes my fancy) I've come to the conclusion that it's a perfectly laid Dunning-Kruger trap which specifically ensnares people like me. I am not as smart as Hofstadter, and I know it, and so I'll never be sure I've actually understood the meat of the message.
I think I get strange loops, recursion, self-reference and the metaphor of the anthill. I still think I'm missing something with breaking the record players, but based on my understanding it's a metaphor for incompleteness.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
I went to the same grad school as the author did and got a PhD in physics there. Most of the professors I knew who taught the guy said the same thing to me about the book. It's just awful.
Fair enough, but I think you must back up your point.
I can see how it could be seen as pretentious, but not all round awful. He certainly appeals to many lofty ideas which may not be entirely justified by the technical material, but the technical material itself is certainly sound as far as I can tell. The main criticism I would make is that he does not draw a clear enough boundary between accepted mathematical fact and his own speculation.
For me, the thing I like about the book is that it is almost a total mixture of formal logic and poetry. If you don't like it, that is a subjective aesthetic judgement. Same goes for his prose style.
I suppose if you were already fully exposed to all the mathematical concepts in the book when you read it, it would have a lot less value. If on the other hand it is almost your first exposure to these ideas, it's like freebasing pure logic while hanging out in alice's wonderland. Great fun, but I agree not a formal examination of the ideas. It isn't really meant to be as far as I can tell.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
Let's not dismiss the guy's opinion off-hand.. I also know people whose opinions I respect and who find GED pretentious and shallow. Personally, I found it extremely well written (although somewhat nonuniform) and extremely insightful as well. I just wish I had read it earlier, say, when I was 14, rather than after a CS education.
I refer to my previous comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3398873 I understand the subject well, so the book sounded to me like an explanation to children of something that isn't really so difficult. Also, it was pretentious (too long for the subject; for example Gödel's proof is a very short paper, I won't waste my time re-reading it in a huge tome for god's sake). I liked the effort the author put into making the book and I understood what he tried to accomplish, but it didn't work to me. After all the hype, I tried really hard to like it and I didn't think the half I had the patience to read was life changing at all, more like boring.