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Honorable mention for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach which has been mentioned many
by hobs 13y ago
Honorable mention for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach which has been mentioned many times on HN. Has many different ways of explaining Godel's genius. Though to be fair you could just read this article and be good.
- hamiltonkibbe 13y agoGEB is awesome. David Foster Wallace's Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity covers Cantor and is an interesting read about... you guessed it.. Infinity. Re: Turing http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/loopsnoop.html http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/loopsnoop.html
- tekromancr 13y ago+1 for GEB. I have been reading it on and off for about 2 years. It's a fun book, but every time I finish a reading session, I am exhausted. I am about 25% through.
- hobs 13y agoYeah it took me about 7 months to finish it, and you are right, every time I just felt beat and my mind was racing, what a great book.
- laxatives 13y agoIMO just finish chapter 14 and you've basically finished the Godel portion of the book. The rest felt more like Hofstadter's random musings on AI, DNA and some other topics (some of which felt outdated). There's some crazy anecdotes of Ramanujin that I had never heard elsewhere though.
- pachydermic 13y agoWell the structure of the book is supposed to be like a JS Bach song - so in the end, what you get is a combining of all the familiar themes and sometimes it feels a bit repetitive and boring. But if you've read that far, it's worth reading the rest. It's much easier to get through than when you're seeing stuff for the first time and really trying to wrap your head around it.