
Gödel, Escher, Bach - anonu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach
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fouc
I tried to read GEB once, but I had a hard time getting past the feeling that
it was more about appearing clever than actually being clever.

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rawburt
I think the Tao Te Ching is more clever than Gödel, Escher, Bach. But, GEB is
still fun-- I just don't think it completely deserves the "Holy Grail" status
it has.

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crimsonalucard
Tao Te Ching talks about good and evil and says that the Tao is older then
god. Chinese mysticism doesn’t mix with western science or logic. For example
western logic exposes the mysteries of the universe in a concrete way by
telling us about atoms, fusion, relativity and more, while Tao te Ching talks
about some vague mumbo jumbo while claiming only greater people understand the
Tao while absolutely providing no concrete definition and no evidence.

Tao te ching is more comparable to works of fiction like lord of the rings or
the Bible. I wouldn’t compare it to GEB which builds its foundations starting
from axiomatic logic. One is concrete, the other is mythical. Do note that the
Tao te Ching was written way back during a time when people were unclear about
the reality of things and probability and the scientific method were not
known. If anything Tao te Ching is a “fun” fictional work while GEB is
genuinely trying to express something about the nature of consciousness.

Don’t be fooled by Chinese mysticism. It’s a bullshit industry where they sell
false religions, bullshit herbal medicines, martial arts and bullshit
philosophies in a genuine attempt to scam you. Some of it is practiced under a
genuine belief but most are scams.

I would know I’m Chinese myself.

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rawburt
Don't be fooled by the concrete either, my friend. The Tao Te Ching is no
different, in ways, to the Bible, the Quran, Lord of the Rings, Dune, Cat's
Cradle, The Feynman Lectures... It's all what you take from it.

~~~
crimsonalucard
The lord of the rings and dune are works of fiction. Is that what you're
saying Tao Te Ching is? I can assure you GEB is not a work of fiction.

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azhenley
MIT had a course on the book with recordings on YouTube. They’re great to
watch as you work through the book:

[https://youtu.be/lWZ2Bz0tS-s](https://youtu.be/lWZ2Bz0tS-s)

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bmmayer1
Ask HN: Has anyone actually read the whole thing? What did you think?

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pohl
I read it cover to cover in high school (85-86, maybe) and another time
through in college. I loved it. I don’t get the modern backlash against it.

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apricot
Same here. Found it in high school and was blown away by the cleverness of the
dialogues. Didn't understand everything else, but the chapter on TNT opened my
eyes to how simple rewriting rules could be used to perform computation, and
that insight was an important reason for my studying theoretical computer
science later. It's a book that helped me dream.

I reread it years later. The dialogues didn't age well, but the rest of the
book is still great.

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braindongle
As an introduction to formal systems[1], it's great. For a musician, it
totally falls apart in the "Bach" section. The idea that the circle of
fifths[2] (or any progression that ends where it started) is a "strange loop"
is just silly. There's nothing strange about it. Traverse a sequence of
(usually 12) integers that slice up the octave by using any integer for step
size and bang! You eventually land back at the beginning of the sequence.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_system)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths)

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lidHanteyk
There's at least one strange thing about it: there's no perfect tuning for
evenly-spaced chromatic-tone pitch systems. Whether you pick 12 or any other
number of tones, the resulting circle of fifths (combined with analogous
octaves) will witness the fact that it's not possible to tune the system
perfectly.

As a musician, I found a lot of interesting things in GEB, even if it did not
advance my music career.

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cellular
I liked this book, but skipped the Bach, and most of Escher parts. They seemed
like a stretch.

I found "I am a strange loop" to be fantastic. It is about Godel.

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v4dok
I think the Bach and Escher parts really drove it home for me. To see how
actually completely different people from different disciplines came to
understand and communicate the essence of the spurious loop and eventually the
paradox.

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flattone
Exactly. Reading it as "what does this book able to do." Instead of "what is
this book doing for me"

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zzo38computer
I read that book, and I think that it is good. (I do think BlooP and FlooP can
be reduced though; IF and comparisons and multiplications are not needed,
since they can be implemented out of the other stuff.)

