
Ask HN: Is "Gödel, Escher, Bach" still worth reading? - vezzy-fnord
Since it&#x27;s such a famous and lauded book, I figured that perhaps I should pick it up and give it a stab. I&#x27;ve read conflicting opinions on it: that it&#x27;s a timeless classic which intersects mathematics with philosophy and whimsical humor, that it&#x27;s pretentious or that it&#x27;s now outdated.<p>What do you guys think? Is it worth it?
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gumby
I don't think it's at all pretentious, it's just an exploration of a bunch of
fun things that occurred to Hofstadter, some of which probably occurred to you
too if you were musing on one or other of G, E and/or B. H. has the time to
expand on them, so it's fun to read.

It's only pretentious if you consider, say, Neal Stephenson pretentious. I
generally find that the people who say kind of thing that don't understand the
topics, but are intimidated to say so.

And G, E & B are all dead, yet their work is still relevent, which makes them
by definition timeless.

I remember when it came out: it swept through my high school like wildfire. I
think every student had read it by the end of that year.

~~~
vineel
Wow. I can't imagine that happening at your standard public school nowadays.
What high school did you go to?

~~~
gumby
I went to a school called Roxbury Latin in Boston. Admittedly there were only
39 in my graduating class, so it doesn't take that many copies to satisfy the
student body!

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dalke
When I read it in high school, I thought it was great. I read it twice, though
I skipped most of the poetry parts and discussion of Bach.

A year or so back, I mentioned my admiration to a friend, who had a copy but
hadn't yet read it. My friend (a CS person with a degree in Physics) tried
reading it, and found it very hard going. So I looked through my own copy
(signed by the author, I'll have you know).

Yes, it's all of what you listed. It looks like I mostly skipped the
pretentious parts, and read the parts with whimsical humor. It was also at a
time in my life where I didn't know much about recursion or self-referential
statements, which made the book's ideas all the more engaging.

My suggestion is to give it a go, skim when it gets turgid, and admire some of
the lengths the author went through to explore an idea. (Eg, an exploration of
the three different ways to translate the abbreviated letter of a street name
from Russian into English.

~~~
triplesec
Whereas the 12-year-old me loved the Bach as well as the whimsy, appreciating
the connection between maths and real structures. too young to parse he
technical parts though. Time to look again.

------
giardini
For me, GEB was a considerable waste of time and contributed nothing to my
understanding of intelligence or AI. The time would have been be better spent
elsewhere.

If you want to understand Godel's proofs then I recommend "Godel's Proof" by
Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman:

[http://www.amazon.com/Gödels-Proof-Ernest-
Nagel/dp/081475837...](http://www.amazon.com/Gödels-Proof-Ernest-
Nagel/dp/081475837..).

Instead of Hofstadter's GEB, read some of his papers, e.g., "Analogy as the
Core of Cognition"
[http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.h...](http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.h..).

But there are others who have focused longer on analogy, e.g., George Lakoff:

"Metaphors we Live by"

[http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-
Lakoff/dp/022...](http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-
Lakoff/dp/022..).

"Where Mathematics Come From: How The Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into
Being":

[http://www.amazon.com/Where-Mathematics-Come-Embodied-
Brings...](http://www.amazon.com/Where-Mathematics-Come-Embodied-Brings..).

"Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things"

[http://www.amazon.com/Women-Fire-Dangerous-Things-
Lakoff/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Women-Fire-Dangerous-Things-
Lakoff/dp/..).

~~~
eieio
All of your links appear to be broken. Looks like they were copy pasted from
an auto-truncated source or something.

~~~
zachrose
Here's a better link for Analogy is the Core of Cognition:

[http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.h...](http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.html)

------
kjhughes
It is a timeless classic which will draw you in if you give it the chance it
deserves. If you find parts to be a bit heavy, you can speed up or slow down
per your personal preference. I chose to slow down and read all the more
carefully. I feel I was truly rewarded for the effort but believe that
hurrying through such parts would be a viable alternative -- certainly better
than abandoning the book as often seems to happen.

It's my favorite book. I recommend you do try it.

------
duncanawoods
Its unconventional and tackles tough topics so its bound to split opinion.
When those situations arise, IMHO the best advice is to give it a go and form
your own opinion.

Is the core thesis outdated? Well we still don't have a meaningful grasp on
what consciousness is. We know a lot more about physical processes but little
more about how the physical world gives rise to consciousness. We are stuck in
roughly the same place pondering whether its just a non-causal phenomena of
the brain or a different type of stuff entirely.

GEB is about the spine-tinglingly freaky consequences of feedback and self-
reference. It gives rise to mind blowing mathematical results of Goedel,
hypnotic images in Escher, the beauty of Bach but its not really about them,
they are just demonstrations of the phenomena, the real message is that self-
referential rules and information processing are the essence of computation,
the core of language and most likely, the underlying mechanism of
consciousness itself.

I think he is right. I predict a revolution in our understanding of
consciousness will not come from a philosopher, or a neuro-scientist or a
psychologist but from a computer-scientist who once read GEB...

------
tlb
"Pretentious" and "outdated" are among the least interesting criticisms that
can be made of anything. Indeed, it takes a little effort to read things from
an unfamiliar historical context, but it's worthwhile learning to appreciate
them.

------
slashnull
The GEB was instrumental in making me a self-conscious and cynical fan of
post-modernism and deconstruction, and an avid reader of tales about failure.

I recommend with a side of Neon Genesis Evangelion, David Foster Wallace and
Radiohead.

------
serf
I'm not sure why anyone would consider it out-dated. None of the concepts are
really things that are 'datable'.

That said, you'll probably find that you need to read it more than once to
glean everything from it.

~~~
slashnull
I have to say I was surprised by that statement, but, thinking of it...

Category theory and Type theory are replacing Set theory as the fundamental
basis of Math, or at least it's fashionable to try to do so, and the book
revolves around the Whitehead and Russel set theoretic work and Godel's
deconstruction thereof. Which isn't to say that Category theory or whatever
are immune to Godel's theorems, I have no idea how those would translate, and
my gut tells me that they would have roughly the same outcome.

But yeah, anyways, wonderful exposition of the kind of extremely bare-bones
framework fundamental mathematicians operate in, magnificient demonstration of
what recursive and self-referential structures imply, and overall a great
read.

------
JamieLewis
I read GEB during my final year of university, during winter break. It took
about 3 weeks of solid reading (wake up, read, pause and think and clear my
mind, do other stuff, go back to reading, sleep, repeat) to get through it. By
that point in my life I had already been exposed to many of the topics
discussed, and even unwittingly read works that cited GEB, so had been also
been exposed to some of the ideas presented as well - I don't however think
that matters too much.

It really is, in my opinion, an amazing and clever book. If you can, I would
recommend taking a few weeks to really digest it, it is not a book you can
read for hours and hours on end - you will need to stop, clear your mind and
reflect on some of the points made - at least that is what I had to do.

Be warned, the book will start to mess with you...but it warns you when it
does...most of the time.

------
rogerallen
To answer the question: Yes, still worth it. Just read it and make up your own
mind.

To ask my own...how do people who read GEB find his latest "Surfaces and
Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking"? I'm just starting it and
it has entranced me quite a bit...

------
jacknews
What are you expecting it to be?

Pretentious? I don't think it pretends to be anything other that what is is: A
book that weaves together similar ideas, basically, self-reference and the
resulting paradoxes and mystery that self-reference can generate, from the the
worlds of art, music and math in an entertaining way for the layman.

Outdated? It's a classic, and cannot go "out-of-date" as in "invalid". In the
same way that Bach's music, Escher's art, or Gödel's proof cannot go out of
date, they can only become "dated".

Should you read it? Only you can decide if your time would be more richly
spent on something else, but I suspect the answer is yes, reading GEB is
probably a good use of your time.

------
brudgers
I first encountered it in high school. In the back of the class my friend Rich
would read it during second year Algebra lectures - he'd sit under the light
on the emergency circuit while the rest of the class was darkened so that the
teacher could write on the overhead projector while monotonically lecturing
for fifty minutes after lunch.

Before the images of Escher and fractals and recursion had a couple of decades
to work their way into the background noise of common culture, GEB was mind
blowing. Now, with high speed internet, cleverly written essays
interconnecting ideas are much more common, and Escher's black and white
drawings feel less visually rich in a world saturated with computer graphics.
The Bach still stands on its own, but the fact that the book can only talk
about it and the reader is still on their own in so far as experiencing the
music goes, and an appreciation for Bach is both the part of the book that
took the longest to develop and the part which has stuck with me the
longest...well maybe a skepticism of systems and general pessimism derived
from the possibility that Godel might be right has stuck with me longer.

Though Hofstadter might have become pretentious in the thirty-five odd years
since he wrote the book, in its time, it certainly wasn't pretentious - it was
a risky literary exercise by an unknown author. It's essentially Hofstadter
splattering his young and brilliant mind onto the printed page - drawing
connections between the principles and intermingling Pythonesque dialogs and
treating the whole thing seriously is absurd. And wonderfully entertaining for
the right readers.

That said, the most dated aspect of the book is the mindshare it has obtained.
The idea that a book offering such deep technical engagement could achieve
popular exposure in today's world, borders on the unthinkable.

It's not for everyone, and it certainly isn't fundamental to computing and the
world being more jaded and less stoned and more informed than the world of the
Carter administration, calling _GEB_ dated is a fair criticism.

Anyway, my recommendation is to pick up a copy from the library and see if you
enjoy it. Life is to short to should one's self.

------
conductrics
I read GEB as my subway book, back in 1999 (during a work stint in Paris),
during my daily commute to work. Years later, when I was looking for a change,
I started thinking about GEB. Even though I had no CS background,I decided to
apply to a few AI programs and wound up going to the University of Edinburgh
for an Msc. in AI in '05\. Now I am a co-founder of software start up that
applies reinforcement learning, a method from ai -lower case ;-) to conversion
optimization. Obviously, I can't say if you will find it a worthwhile read,
but I do look back on it as a significant influence on a major pivot in my
life.

------
shubhamjain
Its an amazing book. Anyone curious about existance, life, and how the whole
system works will be amazed by the author's expertise on the subject; as if DH
had been working on it since decades. Though, I would say people outside tech
community might find it less entertaining (just my opinion).

------
andbberger
I thought it was great the first time I read it.

Then I read "I am a strange loop" and am now of the opinion Hofstadter is full
of shit.

The description of Godel's incompleteness theorem is still excellent

------
zw123456
A prof gave me a copy when I was in undergrad and I read it over the summer
and it really inspired me. I have gone back and reread sections of it over the
years. I think it is still relevant and recommend it. It is definitely worth
the time, my only advice is to not to get hung up on sections you don't
understand, dog ear those pages and go back to them years later and it is fun
to see how now those sections make sense and don't seem complex at all.

------
DharmaSoldat
It is awesome. I've tried getting through it in it's totality 6 times to no
avail, but i still await try number 7...

It is a great read.

------
yc-kjh
Yes. Read it.

Read it again in 5-10 years.

------
sethbannon
100% yes. It will set your mind on fire.

------
Zigurd
I read GEB in high school and really liked the parts about Typographical
Number Theory (TNT). It became useful when I lucked into being able to take
Chomsky's linguistics seminar as an undergrad. The math-ish parts (generative
grammar, IIRC) were easy to grok having read GEB.

------
spacemanmatt
I have owned and kept a copy near me since I first acquired it. I can't read
all of it by any stretch, but it's at least as good as T.A.Z. for opening to
any random page and finding something tremendously interesting. It is snack
food for my intellect.

------
Bulkington
Influential.

Mash-up. Fusion. Outside the box.

Not a revolution, but a diversionary mind bender in its day.

A format much imitated since.

------
sanxiyn
I found Quora answers on this topic to be good. [http://www.quora.com/Would-
you-currently-read-Godel-Escher-B...](http://www.quora.com/Would-you-
currently-read-Godel-Escher-Bach)

------
jamesbritt
When something is described as "prententious" it piques my interest. I often
admire pretention and don't take is the pejorative most people seem to intend
it as.

------
andrewflnr
I'm still glad I read it, so I guess my answer is yes.

------
res0nat0r
Question: Is this book really that popular in tech circles? Or only because it
is featured in a scene in The Matrix, thus it needs to be read for nerd cred?

~~~
vezzy-fnord
It was featured in a scene in _The Matrix_? I didn't even know that.

It's a well-known book in general, particularly famous and revered among STEM
circles. It also won a Pulitzer Prize back when it was released.

~~~
mindcrime
If it was in _The Matrix_ , I missed it. But, OTOH, Baudrillard's _Simulaca
and Simulation_ was definitely featured in _The Matrix_ , FWIW.

~~~
res0nat0r
Ah crap. Thats what was in the movie, I retract my previous comment. It's been
a while and I knew it was some book on the table when Neo was sleeping on his
desk. :D

~~~
polarix
Simulacra and Simulation was actually his fake book on the bookshelf:
[http://thelatestreviewer.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/simulac...](http://thelatestreviewer.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/simulacra.jpg)

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namuol
It is a tremendously entertaining book to read. Yes.

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polarix
With interesting discussion partners, it can make a great book club read, as
there are so many possible tangents.

------
raldi
Read the first chapter. If you're enthralled, keep reading.

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hrrld
Yes.

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yololasaurus
Read it and find out.

