7 ms·

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

by audunw 8y ago

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 vague idea about what's coming in a fun way. If you still don't enjoy GEB, then it's not for you, and that's OK too. I found 'I am a Strange Loop' a more dry and less enjoyable read than GEB, but it was certainly a lot clearer, and better written in many ways. I would probably recommend it before GEB for most people.

stuntkite 8y ago
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, great! But having someone who knows the book take your through it, at least for me, made it a lot more fun. It was, in my experience, kind of a rare book in how I wanted to share what I was looking at with someone but didn't have anyone to share it with really. Having the prof giving a breakdown made it a lot more digestable for me.
- tejasmanohar 8y ago
  What's IAASL?
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Hofstadter's other work, I Am a Strange Loop.
    - grkvlt 8y ago
      one of his other works, rather. there's a lot, including TMI,[0] MT,[1] and FCACL[2] for instance, and I've forgotten some others. 0. The Mind's I 1. Metamagical Themas 2. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
ZanyProgrammer 8y ago
IAASL also has one of the best (and easiest to understand) descriptions of non human sentience-when he talks about why he’s a vegetarian.
- stuntkite 8y ago
  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 anymore. Pigs don't have a complex skin pattern language, but they are smarter than my cats who I would never eat. Other people's cats might be smarter than a pig, mine are pretty dumb. I need to double down on meal planning and just really quit it.
  - usrusr 8y ago
    Pigs are awesome and most of them (all except for wild boar) would not be around if not for us eating them. We should strive for avoiding unnecessary hardship and unsustainably high numbers, not for extermination through total disuse.
    - kranner 8y ago
      Is it such a great thing to be born that we are doing something good for certain pigs by causing them to come into existence?
      - usrusr 8y ago
        Ending all life would end all suffering, it's one of those dangerous philosophical ideas we prefer not to think about to often. The other extreme would be "every sperm is sacred" and I firmly believe that both should be avoided, but only for pigs.
        8y ago
UnderProtest 8y ago
You're hitting the nail on its flattest head here. The metaphors are deliberately broken. The ways in which they break are meant to show aspects of the system. Theorems have characteristics that aren't obvious to non-mathematicians. Hofstatder's goal was to convey some of these characteristics. A metaphor that says "if a theorem were a record and a mathematical system were a record player, here is what would happen to the record player when it played a self-referential theorem record" is an excellent way to show how theorems are different than anything we normally deal with. A more modern book would have been able to rely on the metaphor of a program "crashing" which would have been sad and inept. There are a thousand ways a program can crash and very few of them reflect any aspects of Gödelian incompleteness. They're just poorly made, like a record with a big hole in the track that breaks the record needle. There are essays in Hofstadter's collection "Metamagical Themas" that expand significantly on his idea of what metaphors and analogies actually are and what he thinks they're capable of doing. Reading those makes it very clear why he'd use broken metaphors in GEBEGB. I think GEBEGB is most useful in exposing people who don't yet have any formal training in mathematical theory to some deeper concepts and inspiring them to find the subtle edges of these systems. I read it at about 12 and it changed my life by exposing subtle fripperies of thought. If I'd read it at 20, as the author of this article did, I too would probably have experienced these little amusements as lack of rigor. Instead I experienced them as mysteries, and now as an adult I experience them as very dry jokes and thought prompts.
- erikb 8y ago
  > The metaphors are deliberately broken Also adding to this. A main point of the book is also that there is no logical system that can be complete, so someone trying to get the real big picture needs to be able to live outside logic comfortably as well. A little bit like Zen thinking. You cannot make a clapping sound with one hand. But you have to accept that the question can exist in a space with zero answers.
jjcc 8y ago
I have both books. I read the books using the exact the same approach you suggested. I often skipped parts when I don't want to read. GEB is not a book for consume only once. I came back again and again. The profound meaning of the book and Godel theorem goes beyond many people can imaging. GEB itself is a metaphor.
Crespyl 8y ago
> You can skim sections, you can skip parts, you don't have to understand everything This was very true of the first (several) times I read through the book. I pulled the book off the shelf of my Dad's library at the age of maybe 10-12 (it had the coolest cover), and couldn't make head nor tail out of most of it. It did have a bunch of interesting pictures and I skipped most of the prose to read the funny and intriguing dialogues. Each time I re-read the book I felt like I got more out of it, I think I'd read it more than ten times over by the time I was 20. Having been through GEB a few times made Metamagical Themas easier too, and the same rule of "skip to the next section, or just take a break if I'm not getting it" worked well there too.

by audunw 8y ago

stuntkite 8y ago

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, great! But having someone who knows the book take your through it, at least for me, made it a lot more fun. It was, in my experience, kind of a rare book in how I wanted to share what I was looking at with someone but didn't have anyone to share it with really. Having the prof giving a breakdown made it a lot more digestable for me.

tejasmanohar 8y ago
What's IAASL?
- SilasX 8y ago
  Hofstadter's other work, I Am a Strange Loop.
  - grkvlt 8y ago
    one of his other works, rather. there's a lot, including TMI,[0] MT,[1] and FCACL[2] for instance, and I've forgotten some others. 0. The Mind's I 1. Metamagical Themas 2. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies

ZanyProgrammer 8y ago

IAASL also has one of the best (and easiest to understand) descriptions of non human sentience-when he talks about why he’s a vegetarian.

stuntkite 8y ago
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 anymore. Pigs don't have a complex skin pattern language, but they are smarter than my cats who I would never eat. Other people's cats might be smarter than a pig, mine are pretty dumb. I need to double down on meal planning and just really quit it.
- usrusr 8y ago
  Pigs are awesome and most of them (all except for wild boar) would not be around if not for us eating them. We should strive for avoiding unnecessary hardship and unsustainably high numbers, not for extermination through total disuse.
  - kranner 8y ago
    Is it such a great thing to be born that we are doing something good for certain pigs by causing them to come into existence?
    - usrusr 8y ago
      Ending all life would end all suffering, it's one of those dangerous philosophical ideas we prefer not to think about to often. The other extreme would be "every sperm is sacred" and I firmly believe that both should be avoided, but only for pigs.
      - 8y ago

UnderProtest 8y ago

You're hitting the nail on its flattest head here. The metaphors are deliberately broken. The ways in which they break are meant to show aspects of the system. Theorems have characteristics that aren't obvious to non-mathematicians. Hofstatder's goal was to convey some of these characteristics. A metaphor that says "if a theorem were a record and a mathematical system were a record player, here is what would happen to the record player when it played a self-referential theorem record" is an excellent way to show how theorems are different than anything we normally deal with. A more modern book would have been able to rely on the metaphor of a program "crashing" which would have been sad and inept. There are a thousand ways a program can crash and very few of them reflect any aspects of Gödelian incompleteness. They're just poorly made, like a record with a big hole in the track that breaks the record needle. There are essays in Hofstadter's collection "Metamagical Themas" that expand significantly on his idea of what metaphors and analogies actually are and what he thinks they're capable of doing. Reading those makes it very clear why he'd use broken metaphors in GEBEGB. I think GEBEGB is most useful in exposing people who don't yet have any formal training in mathematical theory to some deeper concepts and inspiring them to find the subtle edges of these systems. I read it at about 12 and it changed my life by exposing subtle fripperies of thought. If I'd read it at 20, as the author of this article did, I too would probably have experienced these little amusements as lack of rigor. Instead I experienced them as mysteries, and now as an adult I experience them as very dry jokes and thought prompts.

erikb 8y ago
> The metaphors are deliberately broken Also adding to this. A main point of the book is also that there is no logical system that can be complete, so someone trying to get the real big picture needs to be able to live outside logic comfortably as well. A little bit like Zen thinking. You cannot make a clapping sound with one hand. But you have to accept that the question can exist in a space with zero answers.

jjcc 8y ago

I have both books. I read the books using the exact the same approach you suggested. I often skipped parts when I don't want to read. GEB is not a book for consume only once. I came back again and again. The profound meaning of the book and Godel theorem goes beyond many people can imaging. GEB itself is a metaphor.

Crespyl 8y ago

> You can skim sections, you can skip parts, you don't have to understand everything This was very true of the first (several) times I read through the book. I pulled the book off the shelf of my Dad's library at the age of maybe 10-12 (it had the coolest cover), and couldn't make head nor tail out of most of it. It did have a bunch of interesting pictures and I skipped most of the prose to read the funny and intriguing dialogues. Each time I re-read the book I felt like I got more out of it, I think I'd read it more than ten times over by the time I was 20. Having been through GEB a few times made Metamagical Themas easier too, and the same rule of "skip to the next section, or just take a break if I'm not getting it" worked well there too.