Redditors start a 6 month read-through of Goedel Escher Bach 2012/1/17

[Triple Zero]

So for anyone needing an excuse to read that book ... :

http://www.reddit.com/r/GEB/comments/nmy4p/starting_a_readthrough_january_17/

[Freeky]

I know who Escher is, and I know who Bach is, but what is a Goedel Escher Bach? 

[rong]

an eternal golden braid.

[LMNO]

A mind-numbing doorstopper of a book that claims to explain conciousness.


It's a fascinating read, but it can get pretty heavy.

[Freeky]

A mind-numbing doorstopper of a book that claims to explain conciousness.


It's a fascinating read, but it can get pretty heavy.

Oooh.  

I wonder if they'd have it at the library...  Nope.

[LMNO]

For a second there, I thought, "what self respecting library wouldn't have--"

And then I remembered.  TUCSON.

[LMNO]

To get some flavor of what he's on about, here's a thread that grabbed a paragraph from GEB and ran with it: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=15647.0

[Freeky]

To get some flavor of what he's on about, here's a thread that grabbed a paragraph from GEB and ran with it: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=15647.0

Neat!  Thanks.

[Elder Iptuous]

it really is a fantastic book.
i've owned three copies so far that i have lent out to people and never got back.  i'll buy it again.
Hofstadter is one of my favorite authors, and if you like GEB, i would also recommend 'Metamagical Themas' (an anagram of Mathematical Games which was the spot he wrote for SciAm magazine for years), and 'I Am a Strange Loop'.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

it really is a fantastic book.
i've owned three copies so far that i have lent out to people and never got back.  i'll buy it again.
Hofstadter is one of my favorite authors, and if you like GEB, i would also recommend 'Metamagical Themas' (an anagram of Mathematical Games which was the spot he wrote for SciAm magazine for years), and 'I Am a Strange Loop'.

"The Mind's I" is also great.

[Kai]

I got halfway through and I found I just could not complete the thing. It, like everything in mathematics, is incremental. When I understood 90% of the first bit, I understood even less of the next chapter, because it builds on itself. Pretty soon I was lost to the algebra of formal systems and missing the point entirely. I'm sure that if I spent massive amount of time rereading until mastery I could grasp it, but I'm not sure if I really want to take that time. I began reading it because so many of you all have been insisting how wonderful it is, and I'm not really sure that's a good reason to push through a book I'm loosing interest in.