Holy FUCK! I read 3 and a half pagss of the preface, and I feel I sufficiantly understand the concepts (in their vagueness and abstraction), but I just feel so overwhelmed by the thought of diving into this enormous book. It arrived in the mail today and I felt it's weight in my hands and it's thickness, I spent some time just getting through each paragraph, where I was constantly stopping and re-reading sentences because I felt I hadn't caught the meaning (ironic I'm talking about meaning, right? Ho ho ho ho ho ho). Lit...
Holy FUCK! I read 3 and a half pagss of the preface...
Camden Mitchell
Wyatt Cruz
honestly i tried to keep up with the maths in the first couple of chapters and eventually ending up just skimming it and reading the dialogues which were super well done as a classicalfag familiar with all the shit bach does in a musical offering
Lucas Rogers
It's an obfuscation of undergraduate automata theory with some cool references posing as a theory of consciousness.
Ian Anderson
I read it and liked it enough
But i wondered how any of it was useful
Charles Torres
What is this book even about?
Carter Lewis
I've been thinking about picking this up. Is it worth it?
Michael Mitchell
me too. Does anyone know any similar books to it?
Samuel Rivera
...
Brayden Phillips
Its a very stimulating book book but take some Hofstadter's thought with a grain of salt. He has been outed using cases he understands poorly. Further his "analogical thinking" is in many forms nothing new (even if epiphenominalism as a shiny laquer is interesting) going back to Aristotle.
However, it is a fascinating play of form and content varying widely in content and scope. Even if you understand how some of this is misguided and how some of it hasn't stood the test of time I say it is still worth the read. This is all the more true if you are completely unfamiliar with the concepts.
Also you can do the exact same as w/r/t the math and lose very little
Hudson Garcia
I wouldn't have been able to read the math anyways.
Cooper Rodriguez
I found his ideas on the development of consciousness to be very interesting. If this book is somewhat outdated and misguided, do you know of anything that's not?I sill plan on reading this, of course.
Zachary Hughes
Could I pick this up from the library and read it in a month or two or is this the type of book I'll have to read and pour over over a long period of time?
Ayden Nelson
I'm unclear on exactly what you're asking guy. If you want origin of consciousness stuff then take your pick of nearly any philosopher of mind in the last 20 or 30 years who has written a pop sci book. This is an area that is largely theoretical, sometimes outright speculation, and at its worst nothing but just so stories. It usually is based on the philosophers pet theory at the time and their tradition's perpetuation or current twist.
If you're asking about generally accessible books on the same topics in general, then no. I'm not really aware of any other book that brings together a circus this big under one tent. If you want to tackle the topics individually you should read Bostrom, some Pincker, and I can't resist throwing in society of mind by marvin minsky to name a few to start with.
This depends more on you than the book, but there is a lot going on in GEB and you'll get something out of it no matter how slow you read it.
Nicholas Morris
>Could I pick this up from the library and read it in a month or two or is this the type of book I'll have to read and pour over over a long period of time?
Mmmm it might be hard to digest it all in a month but don't let that stop you from trying.
David Watson
I read somewhere that Hofstadter meant for this book to be read in pieces and not linearly. Makes sense cause there is so many dimensions to it.
Austin Perez
for a common textbook to the mathematical theory of computation proper
cin.ufpe.br
Austin Wilson
>"""""""""""whimsical Carrolian dialogues"""""""""""""""
This book made me ragequit.
Leo Allen
He is a good writer. At least his writing is unique
Elijah Harris
He literally made this book for retards. Then he had to make another for retarded retards. What's wrong with you people? Is the water making everyone stupid as shit?
David Jackson
GEB is fabulous. It covers a tremendous amount of ground in a unique fashion. I'm sure some readers are turned off by the whimsy, or by the extent to which personality infiltrates the heavier math/science material, but I found it tremendously fun.
Art and mathematics are just two different languages for expressing beautiful ideas.
Luke Bennett
wut?
Ryan Wilson
I Am A Strange Loop kinda sucked compared to GEB. He spent like half the book justifying killing mosquitoes. There was none of the cool shit, like translating a zen koan into propositional calculus. Just him crying over his dumb dead wife. >:[
Jonathan Bailey
>w/r/t
Andrew Parker
Liam Bell
>largely theoretical, sometimes outright speculation, and at its worst nothing but just so stories
Yeah, hence "philosophy".
Nolan Rogers
can you guys really not get the maths?
sorry that sounds a bit smug. its not the maths you do at school (most likely) but a different sort of mathematics. all the concepts discussed in the book are explained in the book, so you dont need any prior knowledge (in fact if you do you might find the maths bits a bit poo).
remember, pretty much all great philosophers were great at maths as well, so dont slack.
Ayden Long
>math can only be true if we can't prove it to be true
>therefore God exists
there, now you don't have to read it
Ryan Ward
Le ton Beau de Marot by Hofstadter.
Xavier Johnson
h-hi?
Elijah Green
>Le ton Beau de Marot by Hofstadter.
this is a much better book imo