Gödel, Escher, Bach

I think the Tao Te Ching is more clever than Gödel, Escher, Bach. But, GEB is still fun-- I just don't think it completely deserves the "Holy Grail" status it has.

You aren't alone. I've tried twice to get through it, but have stopped fairly early on. I think what this means is there is another effective way to reach readers with the same "point" in another narrative.... maybe you can do that? I'd read it. :D

Same here. Tried reading it, but just couldn't connect the dots.

I was super stubborn since I bought it and it started clicking for me on my fifth attempt but have no desire to read it again. YMMV.

I feel like it was an earlier attempt at something we are much better at now: multi-disciplinary storytelling about intellectual topics. The premise is interesting but it feels much more difficult to absorb than it should be. Or maybe its just over my head.

I think it aims to be more of a fiction like experience than your typical nonfiction. Some of the clever stuff is delightful, imo. Also, I learned about the unsolvability of the word problem for groups from that book.

Yep. The book club at work is reading GEB. I had it at one time, but after trying to go through it, I destined it to "Author trying to play moral superiority" card, and I destined it to the donation bin.

I'm sure that it's a literary masterpiece, just like the emperor's new clothes are so beautiful.

Unfortunate. You should have come away with an understanding of the Central Dogmap, as well as Gödel's and Tarski's theorems. If you have Tarski's Undefinability, then you learned enough.

Interviews with the author elucidate something interesting. He feels that GEB failed to convey his point so he wrote another book called strange loop. From what I recall he said that GEB is trying to express how a strange loop is what consciousness really is. GEB is grand in the sense that he wanted to convey this point starting from axiomatic logic. I think it ended up confusing a lot of people because almost any high level topic has foundations in axiomatic logic.

The title of GEB totally throws people off so they dive into the book not really knowing what direction the book is going to take them. But now you know, the book is ultimately trying to tell you what the author believes consciousness is... and he starts from axiomatic logic. All the clever ideas the author throws at you are foundational structures that are explained to you to eventually help you understand the authors idea of the true nature of consciousness.

yes. A number of times.

A tremendously useful book that has the capability to blow open young minds that encounter it for the first time, and a book that can be mined for deeper insights many times around even after you decide you agree or disagree with his fundamental premises about cognition and consciousness, etc.

Hofstadter's wordplay may at times seem heavy handed or over the top but he is also doing something in his writing that allows you to experience something about consciousness while you read it that is pretty slippery. Reading his writing very seriously always has glimmers of experiential knowledge gained through psychedelics, meditation, etc that seem to go beyond the intellectual arguments he is making into the realm of the metaphysical.

Yes. It was fun and interesting. I recommend it to anyone interested in logic and metaphysics.

Yes, I'm a repeat reader, once every 5-10 years.

Yes, read it in highschool. Was a game changer and made that time in my life bearable.

I read it in college and plan to read it again! It blew my mind the first time and I'm looking forward to coming back to it 15+ years later.

Like _Manufacturing Consent_ it's one that I think I'll probably revisit in pretty wide intervals because of the commitment involved, but I think it's worth it.

Loved it and own a copy. I often remind myself of Aunt Hillary when thinking about large organisations such as the military. There are quite a lot of topics in GEB that are simply fun to think about.

I read it cover to cover in high school (85-86, maybe) and another time through in college. I loved it. I don’t get the modern backlash against it.

I read it when it came out. I thought it was absolutely amazing.

At the time, I'd say that the vast majority of my computer-ish friends had read both GED and Lord of the Rings. I find it interesting that so many people here are saying they couldn't get through it.

> "The One has variously been called the Good, God, the Cosmos, the Mind, the Void, or (perhaps most neutrally) the Absolute. No door in the labyrinthine castle of science opens directly onto the Absolute. But if one understands the maze well enough, it is possible to jump out of the system and experience the Absolute for oneself."

http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2012/08/01/memories-of-kurt-g...

There's at least one strange thing about it: there's no perfect tuning for evenly-spaced chromatic-tone pitch systems. Whether you pick 12 or any other number of tones, the resulting circle of fifths (combined with analogous octaves) will witness the fact that it's not possible to tune the system perfectly.

As a musician, I found a lot of interesting things in GEB, even if it did not advance my music career.

I think the Bach and Escher parts really drove it home for me. To see how actually completely different people from different disciplines came to understand and communicate the essence of the spurious loop and eventually the paradox.