8 ms·
6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
- JoyxBen 15y agoIf someone wants to start one for Hofstadter's most recent mega-book, Le Ton Beau De Marot, count me in.
- riffraff 15y agoI don't think it's the most recent, isn't 'i am a strange loop' a subsequent one? Anyway, I read it and it's awesome. It is a much more personal book than GEB though, and it's easy to grow weary of the poem tranations after the twentyeth, but it's a great reading.
- JoyxBen 15y agoI meant most recent "mega-book" since its a brick like GEB (but not sure of the size of "I am a strange loop", so maybe that's a brick too) I can see how the poem translations can get weary, but they do a brilliant job of illustrating his ideas about translation way beyond poetry. I love how he generalizes the idea of translation into all sorts of non-language domains (i.e. translating ice skating skills to roller blading). Now to get past the current set of poems onto the next chapter ;)
- ISloop 15y agoThis is awesome. GEB has been sitting on my bookshelf for about a year but I never got around to reading it. I'll give it a shot, and it's great to know there's a community out there available for help.
- bch 15y agoSweet, sweet, sweet. I know I'm not the only one who's "read it", but hasn't actually finished it.
- brianwillis 15y agoIt's such a shame there isn't a Kindle/ePub/PDF version. I guess I'm off to kill another tree.
- bch 15y agoHit your friendly neighbourhood used bookstore.
- dangrossman 15y agoWhat'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 generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit". http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-chapter9.pdf http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-cha...
- brianwillis 15y agoYou've got a point there, but shipping that book to where I live halfway around the world in New Zealand isn't doing climate change any favours.
- nandemo 15y agoI think you're overthinking it. I'm pretty sure other people in NZ are buying the same book, the marginal impact of shipping one copy must be very close to zero. I've got a Kindle but I wouldn't trade my hardcover GEB for an electronic version.
- jasonwocky 15y agoKilling trees takes CO2 out of the atmosphere? I think you've got this backwards.
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- oz 15y agoI got a copy a few months ago, but I've only read some of the new foreword so far. This is great news.
- rhodin 15y agoIt'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.
- lkozma 15y agoJust 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.
- loboman 15y agoYeah, 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.
- giardini 15y agoThere are times when it would be nice to downvote a post and this is one of them. I would reread "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0061673730/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325087696&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry... before I woud crack GEB open again. In fact I discarded GEB. My belief is that the Devil himself collects these discarded old volumes and passes them out as reading material to nerds in Hell. For 8 years you've been wasting your free time. Sell the GEB and read Nagel's "Godel's Proof" (see my other post for URL) instead.
- rmc 15y agoYou can down vote comments when you have a high enough karma.
- zalthor 15y agoBrilliant way to start the year off. I first got my hand on this book when I was in high school and was bit overwhelmed. I read it again in college, but again, I don't think I really "got it". Getting into a group read/discussion on this book would by simply PERFECT!
- martinkallstrom 15y agoThis was the last book my grandfather gave me before he passed away a few years ago, in translation to Swedish. Back then I was completely unaware that it is regarded as seminal work. He was an engineer just as I am, but I always admired that his bookshelf was brim full of knowledge from completely different areas, spanning psychology, biology, medicine, art and music.
- mmaunder 15y agoHow do you know someone's read GEB? They tell you.
- irahul 15y ago<snark> How do you know someone hasn't read GEB? They pass snarky remarks when someone mentions they have read GEB. </snark> That aside, offering to help people with a difficult book is different from flaunting having read the book.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- WhatsHisName 15y agoThis is such a awful book. Pure hipster material.
- JonnieCache 15y agoIs this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
- WhatsHisName 15y agoI 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.
- mikedmiked 15y agoI interested in your opinion - could you elaborate further?
- samuel 15y agoCould you elaborate? I read it this summer, and while I found that the glue between the chapters was a bit weak(I think the central theme isn't strong enough, no wonder he prefaces the 2nd edition trying to explain what the heck the book is about), it was a pleasure to read. I believe I had an intuition for Gödel's proof(which I have already forgotten), while I probably never have had the guts of trying to understand the real thing. So, you mean "awful" like, at some level of Math/Physics the whole thing seems fuzzy and inaccurate or just "awful" even for non Physics Phds.
- irahul 15y agoI still can not make out whether you have read the book or not. You went to the same school as the author(I presume you mean the OP in the reddit thread), and you knew the professors who taught the guy didn't like the book. Is that all you are basing your opinion on? GEB isn't a physics book, so I don't see how "the professors who taught this guy" say matters - it's all too common that people don't like books that directly relate to their fields; especially so when they deeply vested in their field. Also, opinion is divided on usefulness of other seminal works as well; to quote a few from comp. sci. - SICP, K&R, TAOCP.
- DanielBMarkham 15y agoI've been meaning to review GEB on http://hn-books.com 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.
- presidentender 15y agoI 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.
- jmcqk6 15y agoI think you might be right. The most valuable thing for me from the book was the explanation of Godel's theorem, and I really enjoyed all the language play. After that, I grew really uncomfortable with the comparisons to "this could be how the brain works." I have the firm belief that figuring out how the brain works will not be accomplished through pure mathematics, but through scientific inquiry.
- funkah 15y agoHave you ever seen Hofstadter try to summarize the idea conveyed in the book? He really is not able to, and so I think the book pretty much boils down to "hey here's a bunch of weird/cool stuff." Which is not such a bad thing. But for me, there was a point where I had to stop reading, I think when he tries to independently derive propositional logic or something like that? (It has been a while.) I just remember finding it to be a tedious retread of something everyone already took for granted.
- drewrv 15y agoHe's pretty explicit that the idea is: consciousnesses is a strange loop, and since it's sometimes impossible to understand a system from within that system, we may never be able to understand the human mind because we are trapped within human minds.
- presidentender 15y ago
- tseabrooks 15y agoThis seems like one of the first great "Social" ideas I've ever heard. For me, personally of course, facebook, foursquare, social shopping, etc all solve problems I don't have. However a sort of online book group is something that I might like and would solve a real problem I do have. It may be to niche to make a company out of. That said, what sorts of things would a site (platform?) need in order to be successful at creating guided, curated, experiences such as a book group.
- jmilloy 15y agoI think forums have served this problem for over a decade. Voting systems on comments and nested comments like slashdot and here and reddit are just an improvement on forums. So what are these formats lacking for you? (I agree they could probably be improved by specific changes for online book groups)
- tseabrooks 15y agoThat's a good question; and is really the heart of my question... What do we need to put together to create something good for this... I would invision is as akin to a meetup group only virtual. Here's a quick list of things you might want (With no claims about whether or not they already exist): 1) Real time communication along with some async comm. -Real time comm needs to be archived in a readable form 2) Method for an instructor(leader) to create 'outlines' and have those bullet points contain conversations. 3) The ability to "sign up" for a book / experience. -When we get enough signups and a leader we schedule a start date. 4) A method for people who want to participate at a later date to feel involved and "step though" the old forum / chats at the speed they happened. -A way for slow people or later people to use the site without spoilers -A way for two groups doing the same book at different speeds to work together. 5) [random idea] Make users anonymous to each other... Except for the moderator. 6) Track books participated in. 7) [random idea] Does this idea make more sense as a specialized learning system for literature courses? All the ideas I have right now.
- spelunker 15y ago
- SonicSoul 15y agohah.. GEB has been staring me down from my top shelf for 5 years now. I wasn't expecting to crack it open until retirement time (20 years from now?) but hey.. maybe i'll speed this up.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- giardini 15y agoGEB is a very large book with a small message. I do not recommend it. It is mostly an accumulation of the observations of metaphors and analogies by the author. Yes, I read the book but I found it very disappointing. If you want to learn about Goedel's work then instead read a book that is much shorter and to the point: "Godel's Proof by Ernest Nagel http://www.amazon.com/Gödels-Proof-Ernest-Nagel/dp/0814758371/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325087087&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.com/Gödels-Proof-Ernest-Nagel/dp/081475837...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- MarkPNeyer 15y agocareful; some ideas in this book will fuck with you: http://www.reddit.com/r/BipolarReddit/comments/l7nij/interesting_humorous_not_tragic_manic_stories/c2qiqlj?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/BipolarReddit/comments/l7nij/interes...
- rmc 15y agoReminds me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in which the protagonist has a similar problem.