21–30 of 53 posts
Make sure you don't neglect its contrary twin: Emperor's New Mind. (The entire dialectic between these two books is something straight out of G.E.B.)
I haven't read GEB, but I loved reading the Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose. It's a little all over the place, going from non-periodic tiling patterns to quantum mechanics and relativity, all to argue against the case for strong AI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I read it on Eliezer Yudkowsky's recommendation, but it was too much for me. I mean, I got a couple interesting ideas out of it, but I felt like I was barely scratching the surface. I wonder if anyone has written a good companion guide to read along with it.
It's a combination of two things: An extended musing on the nature of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, including its practical and philosophical consequences, and a series of things as jacoblyles explains in his comment. It's an arty/fun book, I don't think it's bad, but the "mystery" you perceive at the heart of it is simply Godel's theorem, which, to be fair, like many other aspects of computer science does indeed h…
I "read" this book, in that I passed my eyes over the words it contains, and mentally recreated the sounds of those words, parsed the individual sentences, and digested some of the paragraphs. It has had certain effects on my manner of thinking and acting, but it bothers me to know that there's a great deal more information in that hefty tome than I've managed to get out of it.
The teacher of the course himself admitted he took seven years to read the thing. Assuming it's the same lectures I'm thinking of, they are available either on YouTube or iTunes U, because that's where I saw them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I read it on Eliezer Yudkowsky's recommendation, but it was too much for me. I mean, I got a couple interesting ideas out of it, but I felt like I was barely scratching the surface. I wonder if anyone has written a good companion guide to read along with it.
It's a combination of two things: An extended musing on the nature of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, including its practical and philosophical consequences, and a series of things as jacoblyles explains in his comment. It's an arty/fun book, I don't think it's bad, but the "mystery" you perceive at the heart of it is simply Godel's theorem, which, to be fair, like many other aspects of computer science does indeed h…
I "read" this book, in that I passed my eyes over the words it contains, and mentally recreated the sounds of those words, parsed the individual sentences, and digested some of the paragraphs. It has had certain effects on my manner of thinking and acting, but it bothers me to know that there's a great deal more information in that hefty tome than I've managed to get out of it.
The teacher of the course himself admitted he took seven years to read the thing. Assuming it's the same lectures I'm thinking of, they are available either on YouTube or iTunes U, because that's where I saw them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I read it on Eliezer Yudkowsky's recommendation, but it was too much for me. I mean, I got a couple interesting ideas out of it, but I felt like I was barely scratching the surface. I wonder if anyone has written a good companion guide to read along with it.
It's a combination of two things: An extended musing on the nature of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, including its practical and philosophical consequences, and a series of things as jacoblyles explains in his comment. It's an arty/fun book, I don't think it's bad, but the "mystery" you perceive at the heart of it is simply Godel's theorem, which, to be fair, like many other aspects of computer science does indeed h…
I "read" this book, in that I passed my eyes over the words it contains, and mentally recreated the sounds of those words, parsed the individual sentences, and digested some of the paragraphs. It has had certain effects on my manner of thinking and acting, but it bothers me to know that there's a great deal more information in that hefty tome than I've managed to get out of it.
Same. I read it on Eliezer Yudkowsky's recommendation, but it was too much for me. I mean, I got a couple interesting ideas out of it, but I felt like I was barely scratching the surface. I wonder if anyone has written a good companion guide to read along with it.
I "read" this book, in that I passed my eyes over the words it contains, and mentally recreated the sounds of those words, parsed the individual sentences, and digested some of the paragraphs. It has had certain effects on my manner of thinking and acting, but it bothers me to know that there's a great deal more information in that hefty tome than I've managed to get out of it.
Same. I read it on Eliezer Yudkowsky's recommendation, but it was too much for me. I mean, I got a couple interesting ideas out of it, but I felt like I was barely scratching the surface. I wonder if anyone has written a good companion guide to read along with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a combination of two things: An extended musing on the nature of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, including its practical and philosophical consequences, and a series of things as jacoblyles explains in his comment. It's an arty/fun book, I don't think it's bad, but the "mystery" you perceive at the heart of it is simply Godel's theorem, which, to be fair, like many other aspects of computer science does indeed h…
I get Goedel's theorem, I'd like to think. I get strange loops, and how Hofstadter would have a field day with our criticism of xkcd and of xkcd's critics. I just know there's still more.
This could be really good; I've started reading this book twice now, and gotten about 1/3 of the way through both times before my brain starts to melt. Also, Douglas Hofstatder's "I Am A Strange Loop" is a little more accessible and is all about consciousness, if that part of Godel, Escher, Bach interests you.