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voxadamtoday at 1:04 AM8 repliesview on HN

>there is indeed a huge logical error at the heart of the whole enterprise but it was not discovered until much later by Kurt Gödel.

Which leads us to our next borderline impenetrable book, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.


Replies

m-hodgestoday at 1:15 AM

I read GEB cover to cover and haven’t stopped thinking about it for years. Not a brag, a nudge that it’s not impenetrable and more people should read it.

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scubbotoday at 1:45 AM

I'm surprised to hear that that was your perspective! I felt that it dealt with otherwise-opaque topics in a very approachable way.

analog31today at 1:12 AM

GEB was one of the books that inspired me to study math in college. It made math come to life in way that my high school courses didn't.

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sorokodtoday at 5:11 AM

To each their own, I read GEB several times and enjoyed the intellectual challenge and the humour.

Hofstadter wrote a followup book: I am a strange loop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop

annzabelletoday at 3:14 AM

My brother's favorite book in 6th grade was Godel, Escher, Bach.

Why, yes, he works as a compiler engineer.

erutoday at 4:12 AM

Eh, that's just a pop-science tome. Nothing impenetrable about it.

susliktoday at 3:35 AM

> Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.

I gave that book to my mathematician grandma, and she found it so boring she couldn’t finish it - “All this stuff was known for decades”. True anecdote.

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