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For many CS/math people, this is what Godel Escher Bach was. Read it at age 15 and it opens your mind to this alternate higher universe of amazing ideas.

I don't think most people who own it have actually read more than a chapter or two, but that's ok. Its essential function turned out to be to inspire and unlock a part of the young intellectual mind.

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I got a lot more out of his Metamagical Themas (scientific american columns) collection book. Eg Lisp and making self-referential sentences (“This sentence contains three a’s, one b, …”)

Yup, Metamagical Themas and The Mind’s I

indeed i bought it in my late twenties, to pass time. After a couple of chapters I already found it repetitive and i stopped reading somewhere in the middle :/

Yeah, the actual content is not all that great imho.

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