Its unconventional and tackles tough topics so its bound to split opinion. When those situations arise, IMHO the best advice is to give it a go and form your ow

Its unconventional and tackles tough topics so its bound to split opinion. When those situations arise, IMHO the best advice is to give it a go and form your own opinion. Is the core thesis outdated? Well we still don't have a meaningful grasp on what consciousness is. We know a lot more about physical processes but little more about how the physical world gives rise to consciousness. We are stuck in roughly the same place pondering whether its just a non-causal phenomena of the brain or a different type of stuff entirely. GEB is about the spine-tinglingly freaky consequences of feedback and self-reference. It gives rise to mind blowing mathematical results of Goedel, hypnotic images in Escher, the beauty of Bach but its not really about them, they are just demonstrations of the phenomena, the real message is that self-referential rules and information processing are the essence of computation, the core of language and most likely, the underlying mechanism of consciousness itself. I think he is right. I predict a revolution in our understanding of consciousness will not come from a philosopher, or a neuro-scientist or a psychologist but from a computer-scientist who once read GEB...