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I tried to read it in my middle thirties and felt like I wasn't prepared enough to understand it. Should I just go through it without trying to get everything?
by Nekorosu 10y ago
I tried to read it in my middle thirties and felt like I wasn't prepared enough to understand it. Should I just go through it without trying to get everything?
- mtreis86 10y agoYes. I think it was purposefully designed with multiple threads having their beginnings and ends hidden in the text. Even tells you where one thread ends (where it gets nonsensical). So the start of the book is pretty much just dumping you into the middle of the braid.
- olavk 10y agoThe book is basically a Lisp tutorial using metaphors rather than code examples.
- kazinator 10y agoIt's worth to work through all the "arithmoquinification" and "G's uncle" business to understand how a formula can be physically constructed that asserts its own unprovability. Hofstadter manages to make the material quite accessible.
- notsrg 10y agoI think the greatest part about GEB is he'll talk about a topic (that sometimes went over my head) for a chapter and then revisit that same topic in a more approachable way using a dialog between Achilles and a tortoise. Some of those dialogs were some of my most entertaining reads ever.
- dionidium 10y agoI must be broken, because everybody seems to think these are the best parts of the book, and I couldn't stand them. I just wanted to get on with it! I was quite young last I read it. Perhaps it's time to see if I still feel that way.
- ajmurmann 10y agoYou are not alone. I've tried to read the book three times in the last twenty years and I always stop reading in one of those Achilles and tortoise sections. I find them utterly silly and boring and always feel like I'm missing the deeper message. I never had a problem understanding the non-story parts though. I don't dare skip the stories though because I'm afraid to miss out on some incredible insight.