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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I found this book dull, uninteresting and pretentious. Whatever it tried to say in what 1000 pages could have been said in 200. People will probably recommend it highly in this thread, but here is a vote to just leave it alone. It's just not good if you like pop sci but don't like pretentious fluff around it. It's the least inspiring and mind-blowing book I ever read. This could be related to having read a lot on the topics in the past so the subject matter was familiar, and having zero tolerance for the type of writing in it.

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> if you like pop sci

That's the "problem" right there. It wasn't a pop sci book. TBH while Gödel's incompleteness theorem might be seen as "science" subject, it is actually squarely in the realm of meta-mathematics, a branch of philosophy.

The "writing style" is what most would call "literature", which includes prose, poetry, stories, etc. It's not for everyone, for sure, but some people do enjoy it (I occasionally do, but I lose patience.) Calling it "pretentious fluff" sounds a bit extreme.

Exactly - well said

> This could be related to having read a lot on the topics in the past so the subject matter was familiar

I think you've hit the nail on the head. For many people, this book is their first encounter with much of this material (as it was for me, so long ago.)

For you, it's like reading a tour guide of your home city. You're not the intended audience.

If you're not a reading-for-pleasure person, or GEB's topics just aren't your thing, you're not going to like the book. It's not a technical volume; it's not something you read for skills acquisition.

Well you just don't understand it! /snark

That's the usual refrain around hyper-preventious navel gazer books. The moment you criticize, your intellect is up for question, because "you didn't understand it".

This form of logical fallacy is the worst in economics and philosophy.

Well, yes. But that's also a convenient defense for people who didn't understand it. :o)

And to this I want to quote the first comment of this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17461506 "Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach"

> stuntkite on July 5, 2018 | flag| favorite | next [–]

> I'd owned this book for many years and had a similar experience to OP. But one day someone gave me I am a Strange Loop, which I started reading and enjoyed way more. After getting in a little bit Hofstadter makes some apologies for GEB saying it was the sum of work of a very young person. I think he was 24? I think it's pretty incredible considering his age. The things that lead him to thinking critically about consciousness because of his disabled sister I found to be something that changed not only how I interacted with people that were differently abled, but also changed how I saw my own disabilities. Sure it's more than a bit full of itself, but I can't for the life of me think how I would edit it any differently. It's honest from the place he was standing. With a lot of thought, a desire to share, and a perspective that no one else could just stumble on. IMO, it really does kind of have to be what it is.

> So, I decided to put down IAASL and try to really get through GEB first.. like for real this time... and found an Open Courseware[0] on the book to follow hoping that would help me really cut through it. It did! The trick that did it for me was the prof's suggestion that you just skip the first 300 or so pages and he picked up from there.

> I'd thumbed through it and much like op had "looked" at every page, but once I skipped the first 300 and followed along with the course, it was like butter. There is something funny about all the intro dialogs that can fatigue by the time you get to the meat.

> That said, I really enjoyed his reflection on GEB in IAASL and enjoyed the read of IAASL a lot more. Regardless of what you think about what Hofstadter proposes, I think his contribution to critical exploration of the consciousness is artful and invaluable. I think it's fun, compassionate, and beautiful, and it really changed how I see myself and my environment.

> It sticks with me and I think about it a lot and it makes me happy to share it with people.

> [0] https://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/humanities-and-social-scienc...

According to Wikipedia, Hofstadter was 34 (and 4 years out of physics grad school) when GEB was published.

I think u never made it past the first 300 pages and now I wonder whether I should try again. I also wonder what happened to my copy of the book…

Skipping the first several hundred pages is I think a really good trick for people already familiar with and jaded by the subject matter.

I've made a stab at GEB numerous times in my life, in very different stages of my life. I'm close to 60 now so I've HAD a few different stages. I haven't been able to get through it; maybe not even the first 300 pages.

I may try the "skip that bit" trick and tilt at this windmill once more.

(NB: I hated "The Three Body Problem" when so many seem to love it. I wonder if there's any correlation there.)

terribly sadly, at least 14 years after the video lectures being recorded, this ocw page has been destroyed, which is something i've never seen happen in mit ocw before. https://web.archive.org/web/20210411091327/https://ocw.mit.e... has an archive of some of the information that used to be there. fortunately mit uploaded the videos originally to the internet archive, so probably, with enough work, the work can be recovered. https://ia601307.us.archive.org/22/items/MITHS.GodelEscherBa... has the video lectures, and https://archive.org/details/MITHS.GodelEscherBach has the front end to them

and they're under a cc-by-nc-sa license, so share and enjoy; piracy is always an act of benevolence, but in this case it's even legal

(the mind you save could be your own)

I had totally not your experience.

I got this book when I was at the first semester of IT. Back in my university town, most students of IT or physics had this book, or lented it from a friend. And we discussed a lot about what was inside.

So I wasn't a seasoned academic, but the new-kid-on-the-block. And my goal while reading was never to understand Gödel. Or to like Bach's music (I actually dislike most of his music). Or to get into arts -- but hey, Escher I like.

My goal was to train my mind. To get into thinking models new to me, because they aren't taught in normal school.

Also, for me this book was an extension. Even while still in normal school, I went to the university library to read "Spektrum der Wissenschaft" (the german version of "Scientific American", but without the nationalism in the title). Many articles were over my top ... but the "Metamagicum" articles I deeply enjoyed. So when this book come out I expected some extension of these articles ... and I was not disappointed.

> I found this book dull, uninteresting and pretentious.

Yup, exactly my thoughts. But for some reason, the HN crowd keeps recommending it. Its gotten previously-- 5-10 years ago, it would be recommended in almost every book recommendation post

What's the most inspiring and mind-blowing book you've ever read?

Not OP, but as someone who found GEB pretentious, I think the most mind-blowing books I have read were probably Kurt Vonnegut. Mother Night and Timequake probably at the top.

I gave it a good hard go, but came to the same conclusion. It might (should?) have been razored to half the size by a more judicious publisher.

For those of us who enjoyed the book, that'd be removing the best part.

For me this was one of those books that was more about the journey than the destination.

2001: A Space Odyssey could easily be trimmed to 25 minutes or less if all you care about is the plot. But should it?

Well, part of the plot is about humanity’s slow and inexorable evolution through the passage of space and time, so the meditative slowness sets the pace quite appropriately.

GED (in my humble opinion etc), doesn’t really need some of the fluff. It’s a large book that’s easy to spot on the shelf, and it’s hard to avoid thinking that the publisher (and some readers) like it that way.

> 2001: A Space Odyssey could easily be trimmed to 25 minutes or less if all you care about is the plot. But should it?

Yes. Tell me that you just sat there watching it without being distracted by your thoughts at all. Being able to handle torture doesn't make torture good.

Is being distracted by your thoughts so terrible that the rest of the movie should be expunged?

I'm more of the opinion that 5 minutes of graphics that were probably impressive at the time could be cut.

> Is being distracted by your thoughts so terrible[?]...

No, but it probably means you're forcing yourself to watch/like it.

I never suggested expunging the movie. Regardless, excessively long movies/books expunge themselves unless they're famous enough to namedrop.

> I don't like/understand X, so of course no one actually likes/understands X

Where did I say that I don't understand it? It's a little telling that you said that.

Now, tell me you sat there watching it without being distracted by your thoughts.

I sat there watching it without being distracted by my thoughts.

The thoughts were about the movie and its themes: evolution, violence, and yes even "how the f did they do this in the 60s"

Well I guess you've got a point in that there is plenty of time to meditate on its themes given its slow pace.

"how the f did they do this in the 60s" - I consider that a distraction.

Did you make it to the part about the tortoise and hare problem where he suggests that the book may actually be finished at that point? With the rest of the book as noise that looks suspiciously coherent despite adding nothing new conceptually? At that point I had to read the second half to check LOL

De gustibus non est disputandum.

"In matters of taste, there can be no disputes."

Go ahead, eat the book and let us know it tastes!

I am chris@disputingtaste.com

At some point in life one realizes that there is important stuff in good taste. “I just couldn’t call a bad book good.” To quote Dorothy Sayers.

De gustibus non disputandum est

I enjoyed the first part of it, but then ground to a halt about two-thirds of the way through. It became just so much recursive navel-gazing, and I lost interest. Wasn't worth the effort.

I feel exactly the same. It was like 1000 pages of patting himself on the back for being clever. I certainly didn't learn anything and there was very little art to his writing.

same sentiments. i was on 10th page and i was chuckling because i still got no idea what these geeks are talking about. definitely the day i realized im not that smart, too. haha.

You are smart for putting it down.

Yep. It's like a conspiracy theory cult. I quit after 50 pages and found it to be a pseudoscientific, dilettante intellectual circle jerk ad nauseum desperate for hidden meaning. I'd sooner spend time reading articles from [Big City] Review of [Each Others'] Books.

Yeah, I don't think it is for me either. I tried a few times but always found that the style of writing is so strange: if this is a science book, I expect succinct style. Instead, I found the dialogs of Achilles and the turtle are just abominable. What the heck are the intention of the author? Just write it like a science text book and I will probably get it. Also, as a big fan of Bach this book has less than 5% content about Bach.

That's just it. It isn't a science book, I don't think it ever was intended to be one.

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