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- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) - Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (PAIP) - Godel Escher Bach (GEB) - All books fr

by mov 19y ago

- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) - Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (PAIP) - Godel Escher Bach (GEB) - All books from Gibson, Asimov, Sterlig, Huxley and Douglas Adams

hhm 19y ago
Why GEB? I read the original Godel paper and I studied on the subject, and I read a lot of related material... so I found GEB to be rather boring when talking about Godel (and pretty repetitive), and when not talking about it, I found it to be almost unscientific: unfocused, always going into unproved conjectures (or shallow theorems), and very little times explaining about stablished and scientific work that has proven to be useful. So I could never understand this... why all the hype with GEB? What's the big thing with it?
- rugoso 19y ago
  GEB is not a scientific paper ... if you don't realize this, then there is no point in continuing with this answer
  - hhm 19y ago
    I know it's not a paper, but I'm not sure it's a science divulgation book either. Sometimes I read it and I found it fun (as a sophisticated book-game of science), but most of the times it makes me nervous, for the reasons I pointed above, and because I feel it's taken as a book a lot more serious than what at least I feel it is. Maybe it's a mistake in my appreciation of the book, but I can't help it. What do you think about it?
    - rugoso 19y ago
      i think it's a great book, not a "serious" book, whatever that means as i mention in another comment, I'm willing to call it mental-masturbation, in the sense of exciting one's mind (the nerdy mind anyway), so in a way I'm probably not too far from your vision of the book i also think this kind of excitement is the basic motivation of the nerdy minded persons, and any text/experience that can get you in that state is something to appreciate. lastly it exposes the reader to many topics, the reader may get interested in some of those topics and make some further investigations on its own, and at least in that sense it is a science divulgation book (it's more important for science divulgation to get you interested in the topics that to give you some raw facts)
      - hhm 19y ago
        Ok, thank you, next time I'll approach it from that perspective.
      - deleted 19y ago
        [deleted]

by mov 19y ago

hhm 19y ago

Why GEB? I read the original Godel paper and I studied on the subject, and I read a lot of related material... so I found GEB to be rather boring when talking about Godel (and pretty repetitive), and when not talking about it, I found it to be almost unscientific: unfocused, always going into unproved conjectures (or shallow theorems), and very little times explaining about stablished and scientific work that has proven to be useful. So I could never understand this... why all the hype with GEB? What's the big thing with it?

rugoso 19y ago
GEB is not a scientific paper ... if you don't realize this, then there is no point in continuing with this answer
- hhm 19y ago
  I know it's not a paper, but I'm not sure it's a science divulgation book either. Sometimes I read it and I found it fun (as a sophisticated book-game of science), but most of the times it makes me nervous, for the reasons I pointed above, and because I feel it's taken as a book a lot more serious than what at least I feel it is. Maybe it's a mistake in my appreciation of the book, but I can't help it. What do you think about it?
  - rugoso 19y ago
    i think it's a great book, not a "serious" book, whatever that means as i mention in another comment, I'm willing to call it mental-masturbation, in the sense of exciting one's mind (the nerdy mind anyway), so in a way I'm probably not too far from your vision of the book i also think this kind of excitement is the basic motivation of the nerdy minded persons, and any text/experience that can get you in that state is something to appreciate. lastly it exposes the reader to many topics, the reader may get interested in some of those topics and make some further investigations on its own, and at least in that sense it is a science divulgation book (it's more important for science divulgation to get you interested in the topics that to give you some raw facts)
    - hhm 19y ago
      Ok, thank you, next time I'll approach it from that perspective.
    - deleted 19y ago
      [deleted]