Ten Challenges

I'm not saying that this is your case, but usually when this happens it is because the other person is looking at things that you are not.

Reminds me of a time when I heard Robert Sapolsky saying that he did not handle his own stress in a good way. I'm pretty sure he handles it better than me and most people, but he has the knowledge that he is just scratching the surface.

Looks also like that quote from Socrates 'I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.'

But now, returning a decade hence, equipped with a deeper understanding of the material--particularly with the many faces of the self-reference paradox (which amusingly includes fixed-point combinators such as Y) that so deeply fascinates Hofstadter--a lot of GEB comes across as somewhat superficial and self-absorbed. Yet had I not read it, I doubt I would have ever explored the topics in the first place, so in a way the book itself has indirectly ruined my ability to enjoy it, an almost Hofstadter-esque twist of fate!

In the end, GEB is a beautiful but fundamentally shallow book that ties together a lot of very deep concepts--so perhaps I can understand that, if one takes it at face value, it might seem intimidating. Taken as the intellectual candy that it is, though, it's a delightful bit of light reading (so long as the material is mostly new to you).

I'd be interested to know what it is that people find makes them stop.