Nice review. I tell people the same thing: start with the dialogs. It's a fine way in. Love that you mention Lem. Doug caught up to Lem after writing GEB, and included Lem stories in his next book The Mind's Eye. (Are there other SF/Fantasy authors who've mined comedy, besides Douglas Adams & Lewis Carroll?) I also liked that you mentioned the importance of reading this as a physical book. I've wanted to turn this into an interactive book since it was published, but Doug insists that his books are meant to be appreciated in print form...and GEB with its typographic tricks is definitively a print creation (he typeset the book himself, to control the layout, and this was in the days of phototypesetting). That said, the print book can't do justice to the music. Have you listened to the music referenced in GEB? It's a dimension that many find difficult, though one of my math friends ended up buying a harpsichord and learning to play. (I'm deeply into Bach on piano, so it made sense to me.) I'll be posting my own video about reading GEB. Last year I posted an interview with Doug, and the excerpt about how he wrote GEB.
My father had (and still has) a giant library of classical music on LPs, with Bach very well represented! Also, it took me a moment to realize you are THE Scott Kim, whose work I recognize from GEB, OMNI Magazine, and Martin Gardner's Scientific American columns! Kudos!
SF/Fantasy authors mining comedy? My goodness yes. Keith Laumer certainly mined comedy, at least of a satirical sort, in his "Retief" books. Many of L. Sprague de Camp's books are funny. And do remember Terry Pratchett. And Harry Harrison. And a host of others, I'm sure.
A group of us created a book club just to read this book. Several members had PhDs or masters degrees in math, science or philosophy. It took us 18 months, meeting once or twice a month, mostly during Covid over zoom, and bouncing insights among the group, trying to ferret out all the clues, puns, clever self-references and math puzzles in the pages. I remember one time spending 3 hours working out puzzles on one page. All our discussions were lively, invigorating and full of fun and laughter. At the end of our read, we had an enormous serendipity - a major retrospective (400 works) of Marcel Escher's work on view at the art museum. Many of the works hanging on the walls of the exhibition were figures in the book. What a mind-blowing blast! This book is best read in a group of open-minded, curious intellectuals. Or, you can go solo and read it over and over till the ink drops off the pages!
Read both "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and one will learn exactly what one is and how it is that one is conscious. How is it that today one can read ancient books made from sheep skin but a modern book like GEB falls apart in decades? I would gladly pay more for an heirloom quality hard cover version. Wouldn't you?
GEB is one of the best literary works of the 20th century. I feel like it has been missed at the moment, but I believe it will be recognized once again at some point.
A professor for a friend of my brother's once gave out a reading list at the end of the semester for suggested future investigation. It was broken into categories, with the top category being "TRULY AMAZINGLY MIND-BLOWING" and the _only_ book in there was "Gödel, Escher, Bach".
Always have a notebook and something to write with when you sit down with this. There is so much you'll want to remember, things to follow-up elsewhere, playfully presented ideas to be puzzled over, and you'll want to write unexpected thoughts that will occur throughout this epiphanous book.
I am over 70. This book is one of my top three all-time greatest books. I bought a new third reprint in 1982, in my early thirties. It profoundly influenced me and permanently changed my worldview. It is interesting that you should mention SF&F, because my No. 1 is LOTR, and No. 4 is John Crowley's Little, Big. I have SF in the list as well.
I bought this book in the mid 90's. It took me almost 2 years to read it. I was a maths major in college, half way through the book, suffered a major TBI & couldn't read for almost a year. This book & rereading its passages (many of you know why) helped me tremendously on the path to healing my brain. Such a great book that opened my mind to the inter-relationship of math, music & art.
Stick to it you say? I did. Took me 10 years to finish it. When I picked it up in 1980 or so, I thought it must one one of the most interesting books ever written. It regularly stumped my mind and I put is aside many times. I was just too mind bending. After paying my dues I still think it is one of the most interesting thing ever written.
I bought this book during my first visit to the USA as an undergraduate in 1979, having long been a fan of Hofstadter's Column in Scientific American. My copy is now in the possession of my (philosophy graduate) son - unless he leant it to someone else. It's a classic, if only for stating "Hofstadter's Law".
My favorite non-fiction book. I came THIS CLOSE to telling a man in a Japanese book store how great it is. (I speak no Japanese). I always thought that there should be college courses with this book as its sole source. One of my favourite things about the dialogues was that they sometimes physically took the shape of the subject they were discussing.
I just read it a few months ago, after starting it and failing to complete a decade before that, and it’s discussions on thought, AI, number theory, language, etc. are fascinating, but also extremely dense and requiring a great deal of effort to grasp its meanings.
Still have my original paperback copy from the early 80s on my shelf, clearly haven't read it like the speaker has! First tackled it as a newly graduated engineer in '81, took two false starts before successful completion. Fascinating book!
I was a young man and struggled with the MU puzzle, right at the beginning. I refused to cheat and look at the answer, no spoilers but the actual 'solution' was a mind altering lesson for me, I'm sure it set me on a better path through life.
Infinimata and my finite fellow commentators, Twas n't Brillig, Twas my frustration at trying to understand Kurt Goedel. It was my second stab at University around 1978. Kurt had me perplexed as is his wont and asking others wasn't getting me anywhere. On my way to Sam Goodies, NYC, for some cheap Maderna I came upon a young man selling books on a blanket, and there was Goedel with Escher who I kind of knew and Bach who was part of my growing LP collection. I had the perfect background for this particular tome. Math, Philosophy, Languages, Lit, and a healthy love of paradox and slapstick. Long story short I can Goedel with the best of them. Infinmata you did a marvellous intro to this elusive work. My favorite two puzzles were the what word begins and ends in 'h e' and it's companion, which I didn't figure out on my own to my giggling chagrin. That amusing what a dumb-butt I am, revelation. This is a book that must be read to be believed. There were two other books that had a big influence on me. the Below mentioned Julian Jaynes "origin ...... bicameral mind" and Maslow's Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Take care all and keep on keeping on. Jacques Mexico, retired
I bought this book 3 years ago and it's been sitting on my shelf since then, I was always too intimidated to read it, thinking I might be too dumb to understand it. You encouraged me to finally get started on reading it :)
I agree, it truly is one of the most extraordinary books iv ever read, im surprised at the lack of discussion of the book on this platform, iv heard there is a fairly good MIT lecture of it available here on youtube, though
I ran into the sister book, Le Ton Beau de Marot, mostly about translations. He talks about translations a bit in GEB, but here it is the main subject. Just to be clear, Hofstadter writes two kinds of books. He has written quite a few in the old model, where you submit a text and the publisher works out how to arrange the book. And he has written TWO only (so far) in a manner that he arranges EVERYTHING in the book; the fonts, the page layouts, the margins, all the illustrations and pictures. Those two, are Godel, Escher, Bach, and the much less well known Le Ton Beau de Marot. I hope this inspires some to look up and read the book.
More book recs in this vein are always welcome. I'm actually now reading Daniel Everett's "Dark Matter of the Mind" and will most likely discuss that at some point. Also not an easy read, but a tremendously stimulating one.
I read this book (at least most of it) about 30 years ago when I was studying physics in the university. It completely blew my mind and left a deep impression. I had to return the book to the library and hadn't seen it since. Recently I found it by chance in a bookstore and knew I had to buy it and have it around the house. I want to start reading it again but feel it is an obligation to dedicate time to reading and contemplating. Time which I feel like I don't have. This video inspired me to give it a go nonetheless. Thanks.
This was insightful and your passion really made the video enguaging. I dont know if I will teven remember to go get this book much less read it but thank you for entertaining me reguardless.
This is also the author who helped me discover how to grow other talents and carry with a deeper message. I am yet to read this cover to cover, but loved the style he delivers. I also got his second book, Meta magical themas and it somewhat draws parallels to what Wolfram method of automata and nature's own evolution.
Thanks for this. You've just encouraged me to promote GEB up next in my 'readlist'. I feel inclined to add right here that what attracts me to this description is it's similarity to another (hugely under appreciated) work, that of "Darwin Among the Machines" - George Dyson. This is for me one of those 'go to' reads and re-reads (and re-reads). As the title suggests it's is a nod to Samuel Butler, but also Von Neumann, Hobbes, Olaf Stapledon, Ampere, Godel, Leibniz and unexpectedly Erasmus Darwin. Apologies if this is well known here, but it's too good to risk not mentioning. A lyrical, flowing and carefully orchestrated historical enquiry of mind plus machine.
I one wantd to expand on Hofstadter's thoughts on consciousness and self, one may proceed to _The Mind's I_ and _I Am a Strange Loop._ For a collection of his almost random musings or a wide range of topics see _Metamagical Themas_ (not a typo).
I very much agree! "Gödel Escher Bach" is amazing. I used to loan out my copy frequently, and would buy more copies to loan out and have. Curiously, the other book this happened with was by Stanislaw Lem - "The Cyberiad". These were two of my top three. The other, which I expect you would enjoy tremendously, is "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles MacKay.
Lem's works were a big influence on me. You can bet I will be covering them at some point. I actually have never read MacKay's work, I'm curious to see how it holds up.
Strictly speaking, Gödel's theorems don't state that "no system can formally prove itself"; that's just a necessary fact about any axiomatic system. They state (1) that for any system strong enough to express arithmetic, there are true statements in the language of that system that can't be proven within that system and (2) that no system can prove its own consistency unless it's inconsistent. And yes, the book is wonderful.
Maps describe topographies (to varying degrees of resolution). If a map were drawn so well as to _perfectly_ describe a given topography, would it not then be a duplicate? It's difficult to imagine any element establishing itself as separate from the set in which it exists. The suggestion that this could even be possible seems paradoxical to me; a graphite triangle might as well try to prove its own three-dimensionality without being able to view itself from above the paper. Though consciousness _seems_ to imply both self and other, there is evidence to support no such paradigm. It seems that how things seem has no bearing on how things are, and that we'll need to learn to accept some limitations in order to stay provisionally sane.
@@johnbirkenhauer4061 Great. There's just this one little thing that's bugging me, though. Shouldn't the really smart people like yourself be helping to correct the dregs like me, by explaining just where it is that I've gone wrong?
I'm stoked I found your channel, you cover a lot of really interesting books! I clicked on this video because I have been hunting for a used copy of this "Gödel, Escher, Bach" book, and now I have a bunch of other books to add to my list!
It is a very fine book. And, as far as I have seen, it contains no typographical errors. For a large book with such a reliance on printed exactitude, that is impressive indeed.
You must have gone through it with total concentration, kudos to you! But I must say as a graphic designer with forty plus years experience that it is one of the most beautiful and satisfying examples of book design and layout… it’s a joy just to page through, even in my battered copy…
The introduction has some fascinating notes about the way the typography for the original manuscript was created, and apparently on what today would be really primitive hardware.
As for reading the _GEB,_ "author's" chapters lead you, before you know it, to Gödel's incompleteness theorem without a single line that one would at first glance recognize as the formalism of number theory. To me it was a monument to the beauty of mathematics, even if it betrays Russel's lofty ambitions.
I’ve always loved this book, and can see it from where I’m sitting, as I toy with re-reading it soon. It’s interesting to me that you are now the third RUclipsr I know of who has opted for a ‘uniform’, meaning wearing the same clothing (usually a shirt/blouse) in every video. I wonder if it’s a new trend, or just the same idea that has occurred to multiple people to eliminate viewers’ critical comments about wardrobe. Thanks for this video.
I read this book about 40 years ago, but didn't fully understand it at the time. I need to get another copy, maybe I'll have better luck if I read it again. I didn't know about Escher before reading it, but he has since become my favorite artist.
Although it was very pleasant to be snuggled up against a parent while they read bedtime stories by the brothers Grimm, there was nothing like the feeling of freedom that accompanied reading them to my self soon after breaking the coded squiggles under the pictures of Dick and Jane. And the paucity of Dr. Seuss books in the school library was most irrigating (books which I am certain put me on track for trying LSD decades later). After reaching the end of the Hardy boys collection there was Nancy Drew then Dave Dawson WW2 adventures then at last there was Tom Swift who set me up for science fiction and an education in psychology and philosophy. Philip K. Dick became my favorite SF author and there was nothing as entertaining until my encounter with GEB. Word play humour on almost every page, couldn't put it down until it was finished. Only Julian Jaynes' great book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" competed with it for number one on my book shelf. The two books in combination constitute the foundation of my certainty that I know how it is that I am conscious.
I was wondering why this video was suggested to me. I was interested because I started reading GEB decades ago...but have not gone back to it. By the time I got to the discussion of SciFi, it all made sense: I have been recently watching numerous videos on films of A. Tarkovsky, whose Solaris was based on the book by Stanislaw Lem.
I don't doubt the reading experience of GEB. It's a compelling book. Hofstadter was one scholar among many working during that time and along similar lines. People interested in GEB should also check out Minsky's Society of Mind or Hampden Turner's Maps of Mind or the work by the Dreyfus brothers. It's all compelling stuff. There's also been a lot of work in cognitive studies / science done since then. For those here really drawn to GEB might want to check out the work of Mark Turner, something like his The Origin of Ideas might be especially compelling.
I recommend another Hafstadter book on consciousness, "I Am A Strange Loop." If you love the ideas in GEB, now explore consciousness after the author's professional development and consideration of his own grief after the death of his wife. My copy also fell apart. The publisher clearly made poor choices. The book must have been expensive to print, given the diagrams and typography.
Yeah it's really interesting. I haven't read it in years, but I think it helped shape a lot of what I think about and understand subconsciously (since I don't really consciously remember too many specifics). But my dialogue around the current AI boom is so contrary to so many people. People who think chatGPT is thinking and reasoning and understanding. I think I need to read it again, but I'm so opposed to that idea and it's probably in part due to this book.
I'm also of the belief that ChatGPT is not doing any actual thinking. It's a very clever simulation of the outwards artifacts of thought, but not more than that. I understand Roger Penrose also has some interesting ideas and work in this vein, and I plan to talk about him generally a little later on.
@@Infinimata Sir Roger thinks consciousness Is not computational so ChatGPT has no chance of thinking. I wouldn't bet against Penrose, he's kinda smart.
Has anyone ever mentioned that you bear a striking resemblance to Johnny Galecki's Professor Leonard Hofstadter from Big Bang Theory? Just a curious coincidence given the video topic is all. 😋
I read GEB many years ago, and came up for air with the realization that it predicted things like AIDS, prions (mad cow disease,) and new viruses that could cause pandemics. Amazing possibilities, and so many ideas for science fiction stories! It made me wish I could write novels.
It is a readable book. But like everything else, you should not accept every bit of its opinions as an absolute truth. There are places where it comes down to very fundamental technical stuff that it gets a little wrong. It remains an extremely well composed account of the interplay between arts and philosophy on which it has its focus., and as such it has a superior legacy.
It's an interesting book; Love all the Escher woodcuts and drawings...Some great stories about the endless loop and how it relates to the work of Bach and Godel...I started reading it in 82...I was doing a job (tile) for a UPenn professor of mathematics I mentioned the book to him; to show I wasn't an ignoratzi...He said something that stuck with me all these decades-"No One ever actually read the whole book"...:) It's really not the type of book that requires that though...:)
I read this when I was 20 and it informed my life massively. I was a genius growing up, still am but nobody cares when you are an adult. My father was assassinated when I was 2. The copy belonged to my Uncle who was in a concentration camp in South Africa in the 70s under a Jewish Psychologist. I love how this book is about more than just maths or logic, it's about magic, and the magic of genius.
6:40 - Of course he is. I see that you've chose one of his most, umm, playful titles with lots of political satire (among other topics) as the illustration. Not all are like that, but they are all exceptional food for thought.
But thinking is not a form of computation. Computation is a strictly mechanical process with no real "mentality" behind it. Anything you can do with an electronic computer you could, in theory, do with pumps, valves, pipes, and water. It would be huge, but in theory there's nothing stopping us, no matter how complex the computational task under consideration. Would you say a plumbing system is thinking? How about a huge number of dominoes tipping over? Or just marks made on pieces of paper according to a set of rules? No - it's CLEAR that computation is not thought. The whole idea is misguided.
I am imagining a zen diagram in which the circle representing thought and the circle representing computation share an area of intersection, an area which represents thoughts that are also computations or computations that are accomplished by the thinking process. Oops, I meant Venn diagram. But a thought is naught but a representation whose substrate is a neural discharge timing pattern. And thinking is the intermodulation of these representations as accomplished via the dynamic analogue logic of synapses. The self, which is the only entity in the universe that is or can be conscious, is the thought that begins existence as a representation of the body but which, following some considerable experience, becomes the thought that represents its self in a strange loop that involves reflection, metaphorically speaking, naturally.
GEB and A.i. - Godel’s warning! What’s MORE compelling about GEB, today more than ever, as is the eternal golden braid of self-referencing systems. A Bach fugue or Escher infinite-stairway composition are perfect examples of self-referencing systems (i.e., eternal golden braids). Godel’s incompleteness ruffles feathers, even today! With the exception of, say, Euclidian geometry, no system can be considered complete and consistent. Further, mathematical proofs are, largely self-referencing and self-validating. Art, like Bach and Escher’s works transcend these concepts. Science and Mathematical systems can never be wholly valid (eg: this statement is not true). More interesting are the ramifications for A.i., as science attempts to create ‘predictive’ systems which, in fact, can never be reliable (i.e., FUTURE ‘predictive’ A.i. implementations are, inherently self-referencing and, due to size and complexity, can ONLY be self-validated by other instances of A.i.). Like some of Bach’s or Escher’s works, we only have the illusion of escaping the reality Godel’s theorem cautions. Thus, Godel’s claims remain ever true and we can never escape from ‘playing in a sandbox’.
It is a wonderful book but it has always frustrated me, as has Hofstadter. He teases around the ideas of what thinking consists of without drawing any definite conclusions - other than the idea that Strange Loops must somehow be at the bottom of it. He didn't get into machine learning because he didn't think it had much to do with how human intelligence works, and I agree with him. What I want to know - what we all want to know - is how the brain does its magic. It is an information processor that operates physically. What is the secret?
The conceptory seems to be a controller that manages seed (gene) expression. (“.. it was crucial for the conceptory to chart the consequences of new variations to the mind seed.) This raises but does not answer the question of abiogenesis - i.e. where did the conceptory come from? The womb is described as “a virtual machine designed to execute the seed’s instructions”. This is what the cell does through transcription and translation. While the author offers a somewhat flowery description of how the womb does this (When the womb read the seed, the seed’s first shaper caused the space around it to be filled with a simple pattern of data: a single, frozen numerical wave train, sculpted across the emptiness like a billion perfect ranks of sand dunes) it sheds no light on the mechanisms involved. That’s where my interest lies.
I think that Hofstadter is right that recursive chemical processes at many levels produce emergent metabolic regulatory mechanisms that make life possible. The question is, how?
@@fr57ujf "abiogenesis" isn't a thing in Orphanogenesis. The conceptory is a piece of software programmed by humans. The whole description of "orphanogenesis" is based on actual organogenesis, which is where gradients in hormones cause different genes to express at different places. You can get flies growing legs where antennae belong by screwing with the hormone levels in the eggs. My interest in that chapter was more in the later parts of it, where the whole "your consciousness is the simulation of you that your hardware is running." As for "how did actual life actually start," there are lots of hypotheses but none that we've proved for sure. We know how evolution works, but what came before self-replicating molecules subject to transcription errors appeared is unclear, last I looked.
You’ve done for me, only an introduction, I don’t yet know what excites your imagination. So Im greatly disappointing by building my curiosity, without any examples…I feel like this is click bait for me. I clicked on your RUclips subject title hoping for some deeper refresher of what I read decades ago. Im still waiting.
Nice review. I tell people the same thing: start with the dialogs. It's a fine way in.
Love that you mention Lem. Doug caught up to Lem after writing GEB, and included Lem stories in his next book The Mind's Eye. (Are there other SF/Fantasy authors who've mined comedy, besides Douglas Adams & Lewis Carroll?)
I also liked that you mentioned the importance of reading this as a physical book. I've wanted to turn this into an interactive book since it was published, but Doug insists that his books are meant to be appreciated in print form...and GEB with its typographic tricks is definitively a print creation (he typeset the book himself, to control the layout, and this was in the days of phototypesetting).
That said, the print book can't do justice to the music. Have you listened to the music referenced in GEB? It's a dimension that many find difficult, though one of my math friends ended up buying a harpsichord and learning to play. (I'm deeply into Bach on piano, so it made sense to me.)
I'll be posting my own video about reading GEB. Last year I posted an interview with Doug, and the excerpt about how he wrote GEB.
My father had (and still has) a giant library of classical music on LPs, with Bach very well represented!
Also, it took me a moment to realize you are THE Scott Kim, whose work I recognize from GEB, OMNI Magazine, and Martin Gardner's Scientific American columns! Kudos!
SF/Fantasy authors mining comedy? My goodness yes. Keith Laumer certainly mined comedy, at least of a satirical sort, in his "Retief" books. Many of L. Sprague de Camp's books are funny. And do remember Terry Pratchett. And Harry Harrison. And a host of others, I'm sure.
When you musically present the book, hope the first chord you play is e-minor first inversion.
He pronounced Gödel like girdle. Smh
Does Kurt Vonnegut count?
A group of us created a book club just to read this book. Several members had PhDs or masters degrees in math, science or philosophy. It took us 18 months, meeting once or twice a month, mostly during Covid over zoom, and bouncing insights among the group, trying to ferret out all the clues, puns, clever self-references and math puzzles in the pages. I remember one time spending 3 hours working out puzzles on one page. All our discussions were lively, invigorating and full of fun and laughter. At the end of our read, we had an enormous serendipity - a major retrospective (400 works) of Marcel Escher's work on view at the art museum. Many of the works hanging on the walls of the exhibition were figures in the book. What a mind-blowing blast! This book is best read in a group of open-minded, curious intellectuals. Or, you can go solo and read it over and over till the ink drops off the pages!
Best read-along ever.
I had to read it 3 times and by a second copy because I was loaning it to so many friends.
you win the Best Covid Bookclub
Maurits. Escher's first name is Maurits.
Read both "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and
one will learn exactly what one is and
how it is that one is conscious.
How is it that today one can read
ancient books made from sheep skin but
a modern book like GEB
falls apart in decades?
I would gladly pay more for an heirloom quality hard cover version.
Wouldn't you?
GEB is one of the best literary works of the 20th century. I feel like it has been missed at the moment, but I believe it will be recognized once again at some point.
Thanks for appreciating the book, but attacking the other commenters isn't needed.
@@Infinimata My bad, fixed it.
@@mrmadmaxalot Appreciated!
Well, it DID win a Pulitzer Prize, so there's that!
This was considered a must-read by my fellow 1st year students and me at university in 1979. We couldn't stop talking about it!
A professor for a friend of my brother's once gave out a reading list at the end of the semester for suggested future investigation. It was broken into categories, with the top category being "TRULY AMAZINGLY MIND-BLOWING" and the _only_ book in there was "Gödel, Escher, Bach".
Always have a notebook and something to write with when you sit down with this. There is so much you'll want to remember, things to follow-up elsewhere, playfully presented ideas to be puzzled over, and you'll want to write unexpected thoughts that will occur throughout this epiphanous book.
I am over 70. This book is one of my top three all-time greatest books. I bought a new third reprint in 1982, in my early thirties. It profoundly influenced me and permanently changed my worldview. It is interesting that you should mention SF&F, because my No. 1 is LOTR, and No. 4 is John Crowley's Little, Big. I have SF in the list as well.
I missed two weeks of university lectures back in 1982 or so because I couldn't let go of this book.
I bought this book in the mid 90's.
It took me almost 2 years to read it. I was a maths major in college, half way through the book, suffered a major TBI & couldn't read for almost a year.
This book & rereading its passages (many of you know why) helped me tremendously on the path to healing my brain.
Such a great book that opened my mind to the inter-relationship of math, music & art.
Your not kidding when you say theres something mind blowing on every page
Hofstadter's conversations with "Ant Hillary" were a profoundly illuminating metaphor for the ideas of complexity and emergent properties.
Thank you a lot for this meaningful review of an extraordinary book.
You gave me the desire to read it an nieth time (i don't count them anymore :) )
Stick to it you say? I did. Took me 10 years to finish it. When I picked it up in 1980 or so, I thought it must one one of the most interesting books ever written. It regularly stumped my mind and I put is aside many times. I was just too mind bending. After paying my dues I still think it is one of the most interesting thing ever written.
You inspire me to return to GEB, which I put down a decade or more ago.
@@exoplanet11 Worth it. It's time I re-read it again.
I bought this book during my first visit to the USA as an undergraduate in 1979, having long been a fan of Hofstadter's Column in Scientific American. My copy is now in the possession of my (philosophy graduate) son - unless he leant it to someone else. It's a classic, if only for stating "Hofstadter's Law".
My favorite non-fiction book. I came THIS CLOSE to telling a man in a Japanese book store how great it is. (I speak no Japanese). I always thought that there should be college courses with this book as its sole source.
One of my favourite things about the dialogues was that they sometimes physically took the shape of the subject they were discussing.
I just read it a few months ago, after starting it and failing to complete a decade before that, and it’s discussions on thought, AI, number theory, language, etc. are fascinating, but also extremely dense and requiring a great deal of effort to grasp its meanings.
This is a great video. Your enthusiasm is palpable, excellent insight thank you!
Still have my original paperback copy from the early 80s on my shelf, clearly haven't read it like the speaker has! First tackled it as a newly graduated engineer in '81, took two false starts before successful completion. Fascinating book!
I was a young man and struggled with the MU puzzle, right at the beginning.
I refused to cheat and look at the answer, no spoilers but the actual 'solution' was a mind altering lesson for me, I'm sure it set me on a better path through life.
Infinimata and my finite fellow commentators, Twas n't Brillig, Twas my frustration at trying to understand Kurt Goedel. It was my second stab at University around 1978. Kurt had me perplexed as is his wont and asking others wasn't getting me anywhere. On my way to Sam Goodies, NYC, for some cheap Maderna I came upon a young man selling books on a blanket, and there was Goedel with Escher who I kind of knew and Bach who was part of my growing LP collection. I had the perfect background for this particular tome. Math, Philosophy, Languages, Lit, and a healthy love of paradox and slapstick. Long story short I can Goedel with the best of them.
Infinmata you did a marvellous intro to this elusive work. My favorite two puzzles were the what word begins and ends in 'h e' and it's companion, which I didn't figure out on my own to my giggling chagrin. That amusing what a dumb-butt I am, revelation. This is a book that must be read to be believed. There were two other books that had a big influence on me. the Below mentioned Julian Jaynes "origin ...... bicameral mind" and Maslow's Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Take care all and keep on keeping on. Jacques Mexico, retired
I bought this book 3 years ago and it's been sitting on my shelf since then, I was always too intimidated to read it, thinking I might be too dumb to understand it. You encouraged me to finally get started on reading it :)
I, too, have been tantalized for years, but have barely made it into the first 25 pages or so. Some time, it will be the right time....
I agree, it truly is one of the most extraordinary books iv ever read, im surprised at the lack of discussion of the book on this platform, iv heard there is a fairly good MIT lecture of it available here on youtube, though
I ran into the sister book, Le Ton Beau de Marot, mostly about translations. He talks about translations a bit in GEB, but here it is the main subject. Just to be clear, Hofstadter writes two kinds of books. He has written quite a few in the old model, where you submit a text and the publisher works out how to arrange the book. And he has written TWO only (so far) in a manner that he arranges EVERYTHING in the book; the fonts, the page layouts, the margins, all the illustrations and pictures. Those two, are Godel, Escher, Bach, and the much less well known Le Ton Beau de Marot. I hope this inspires some to look up and read the book.
Got it!
So I'll stop procrastinating and pick it up from my shelf and read it!!
I can tell ill open my mind incredibly for writing my own stories!!
Great intro. Having studied Cognitive Science and completed PhD in Computational Neuroscience this is right up my ally. I still have GEB on my shelf.
More book recs in this vein are always welcome. I'm actually now reading Daniel Everett's "Dark Matter of the Mind" and will most likely discuss that at some point. Also not an easy read, but a tremendously stimulating one.
I read this book (at least most of it) about 30 years ago when I was studying physics in the university. It completely blew my mind and left a deep impression. I had to return the book to the library and hadn't seen it since.
Recently I found it by chance in a bookstore and knew I had to buy it and have it around the house. I want to start reading it again but feel it is an obligation to dedicate time to reading and contemplating. Time which I feel like I don't have. This video inspired me to give it a go nonetheless. Thanks.
It’s certainly adds to the experience if you play the accompanying and appropriate pieces by Bach for the different dialogues.
This is still my favourite book, decades after i first read it.
Fantastic book. Turned on to this in late 80's
You understood only a fraction of it when you were nine? I am 76, I've read it countless times - and I STILL understand only a fraction of it...
This was insightful and your passion really made the video enguaging. I dont know if I will teven remember to go get this book much less read it but thank you for entertaining me reguardless.
If you do decide to sit down with it, be prepared to spend a lot of time with it - and not all in one sitting, either!
This is also the author who helped me discover how to grow other talents and carry with a deeper message. I am yet to read this cover to cover, but loved the style he delivers. I also got his second book, Meta magical themas and it somewhat draws parallels to what Wolfram method of automata and nature's own evolution.
Thanks for this. You've just encouraged me to promote GEB up next in my 'readlist'. I feel inclined to add right here that what attracts me to this description is it's similarity to another (hugely under appreciated) work, that of "Darwin Among the Machines" - George Dyson. This is for me one of those 'go to' reads and re-reads (and re-reads). As the title suggests it's is a nod to Samuel Butler, but also Von Neumann, Hobbes, Olaf Stapledon, Ampere, Godel, Leibniz and unexpectedly Erasmus Darwin. Apologies if this is well known here, but it's too good to risk not mentioning. A lyrical, flowing and carefully orchestrated historical enquiry of mind plus machine.
I one wantd to expand on Hofstadter's thoughts on consciousness and self, one may proceed to _The Mind's I_ and _I Am a Strange Loop._ For a collection of his almost random musings or a wide range of topics see _Metamagical Themas_ (not a typo).
I very much agree! "Gödel Escher Bach" is amazing. I used to loan out my copy frequently, and would buy more copies to loan out and have. Curiously, the other book this happened with was by Stanislaw Lem - "The Cyberiad". These were two of my top three. The other, which I expect you would enjoy tremendously, is "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles MacKay.
Lem's works were a big influence on me. You can bet I will be covering them at some point. I actually have never read MacKay's work, I'm curious to see how it holds up.
Loved The Cyberiad.
I share your feeling. I discovered this book in the early 80s, I consider it the most personally influential book I've ever read.
Strictly speaking, Gödel's theorems don't state that "no system can formally prove itself"; that's just a necessary fact about any axiomatic system. They state (1) that for any system strong enough to express arithmetic, there are true statements in the language of that system that can't be proven within that system and (2) that no system can prove its own consistency unless it's inconsistent. And yes, the book is wonderful.
Maps describe topographies (to varying degrees of resolution). If a map were drawn so well as to _perfectly_ describe a given topography, would it not then be a duplicate?
It's difficult to imagine any element establishing itself as separate from the set in which it exists. The suggestion that this could even be possible seems paradoxical to me; a graphite triangle might as well try to prove its own three-dimensionality without being able to view itself from above the paper.
Though consciousness _seems_ to imply both self and other, there is evidence to support no such paradigm. It seems that how things seem has no bearing on how things are, and that we'll need to learn to accept some limitations in order to stay provisionally sane.
You are trying to outgeek the wrong crowd.
@@johnbirkenhauer4061 That was really helpful. I didn't realize how categorically outranked I was. Thanks.
That's OK. We all did!
@@johnbirkenhauer4061 Great. There's just this one little thing that's bugging me, though. Shouldn't the really smart people like yourself be helping to correct the dregs like me, by explaining just where it is that I've gone wrong?
Your channel is underrated. If you continue on this path, I see you having so so many subscribers
I sure hope you're right!
his book Surfaces and Essences is awesome
Thanks- just ordered the book.
I'm stoked I found your channel, you cover a lot of really interesting books! I clicked on this video because I have been hunting for a used copy of this "Gödel, Escher, Bach" book, and now I have a bunch of other books to add to my list!
It is a very fine book. And, as far as I have seen, it contains no typographical errors. For a large book with such a reliance on printed exactitude, that is impressive indeed.
You must have gone through it with total concentration, kudos to you! But I must say as a graphic designer with forty plus years experience that it is one of the most beautiful and satisfying examples of book design and layout… it’s a joy just to page through, even in my battered copy…
The introduction has some fascinating notes about the way the typography for the original manuscript was created, and apparently on what today would be really primitive hardware.
As for reading the _GEB,_ "author's" chapters lead you, before you know it, to Gödel's incompleteness theorem without a single line that one would at first glance recognize as the formalism of number theory. To me it was a monument to the beauty of mathematics, even if it betrays Russel's lofty ambitions.
I’ve always loved this book, and can see it from where I’m sitting, as I toy with re-reading it soon.
It’s interesting to me that you are now the third RUclipsr I know of who has opted for a ‘uniform’, meaning wearing the same clothing (usually a shirt/blouse) in every video. I wonder if it’s a new trend, or just the same idea that has occurred to multiple people to eliminate viewers’ critical comments about wardrobe.
Thanks for this video.
I think you might just have seen multiple videos in a row of me wearing the same shirt :D
I read this book about 40 years ago, but didn't fully understand it at the time. I need to get another copy, maybe I'll have better luck if I read it again. I didn't know about Escher before reading it, but he has since become my favorite artist.
The anniversary edition has a new introduction by Hofstader that may also help explain the book's approach.
I loved hearing about how you've worn out multiple copies of this book!
@@chrisbrowne8645 One of my other friends has also gone through multiple copies over the decades!
Hofstadter and Lem in one video? Subscribed!
Although it was very pleasant to be snuggled up against a parent
while they read bedtime stories by the brothers Grimm,
there was nothing like the feeling of freedom that
accompanied reading them to my self soon after
breaking the coded squiggles under the pictures of Dick and Jane.
And the paucity of Dr. Seuss books in the school library was most irrigating
(books which I am certain put me on track for trying LSD decades later).
After reaching the end of the Hardy boys collection there was Nancy Drew
then Dave Dawson WW2 adventures then at last there was Tom Swift who
set me up for science fiction and an education in psychology and philosophy.
Philip K. Dick became my favorite SF author and there was nothing as entertaining
until my encounter with GEB.
Word play humour on almost every page,
couldn't put it down until it was finished.
Only Julian Jaynes' great book,
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
competed with it for number one on my book shelf.
The two books in combination constitute the foundation of my certainty
that I know how it is that I am conscious.
My hardcover fell apart a long time ago. Great book.
I was pretty intimidated to start reading this book. So much so I carried it around for the first month before I even read a page.
Representations of things, that is what thoughts are.
I was wondering why this video was suggested to me. I was interested because I started reading GEB decades ago...but have not gone back to it. By the time I got to the discussion of SciFi, it all made sense: I have been recently watching numerous videos on films of A. Tarkovsky, whose Solaris was based on the book by Stanislaw Lem.
@@exoplanet11 Lem's work will be part of future installments!
My favourite book! 😀
And one of mine too (as if you couldn't guess!)
@@Infinimata 🤣
I don't doubt the reading experience of GEB. It's a compelling book. Hofstadter was one scholar among many working during that time and along similar lines. People interested in GEB should also check out Minsky's Society of Mind or Hampden Turner's Maps of Mind or the work by the Dreyfus brothers. It's all compelling stuff. There's also been a lot of work in cognitive studies / science done since then. For those here really drawn to GEB might want to check out the work of Mark Turner, something like his The Origin of Ideas might be especially compelling.
I suddenly realize I can't remember how I came across it. Was it discussed in Scientific American when first published?
I do remember Martin Gardner writing about it, so I suspect that's a likely point of contact
The front cover alone...
You may notice that I'm a fan of Lem too.
@@MagruderSpoots A future project of mine is to talk about his Summa Technologiae
I recommend another Hafstadter book on consciousness, "I Am A Strange Loop." If you love the ideas in GEB, now explore consciousness after the author's professional development and consideration of his own grief after the death of his wife.
My copy also fell apart. The publisher clearly made poor choices. The book must have been expensive to print, given the diagrams and typography.
I just found your channel. ❤
I tried reading it in the mid '80's... couldn't get past 15 or so pages, I was so lost! 🤣 From time to time I'm tempted to try again....
Yeah it's really interesting. I haven't read it in years, but I think it helped shape a lot of what I think about and understand subconsciously (since I don't really consciously remember too many specifics). But my dialogue around the current AI boom is so contrary to so many people. People who think chatGPT is thinking and reasoning and understanding. I think I need to read it again, but I'm so opposed to that idea and it's probably in part due to this book.
I'm also of the belief that ChatGPT is not doing any actual thinking. It's a very clever simulation of the outwards artifacts of thought, but not more than that. I understand Roger Penrose also has some interesting ideas and work in this vein, and I plan to talk about him generally a little later on.
@@Infinimata Sir Roger thinks consciousness Is not computational so ChatGPT has no chance of thinking. I wouldn't bet against Penrose, he's kinda smart.
i am going to comment here so that youtube decides to recommend more of this fresh gems to me. Thank you !
The part about the ant colony has perhaps influenced me more than any other thing I've ever read.
For me it was the chapter on Zen, which got me interested in the practice generally.
I read it in my 20's and it broke my brain. I recommend not reading it until in your 30's and only then 1 chapter per year.
It broke my brain in my 20s, maybe time to try again!
Has anyone ever mentioned that you bear a striking resemblance to Johnny Galecki's Professor Leonard Hofstadter from Big Bang Theory?
Just a curious coincidence given the video topic is all. 😋
Should I be flattered or terrified?
It should be a text book for a philosophy course.
Shame to admit never read it. Going to order immediately
Ive loved this book since i was a teen
The author used to have a regular fugue column in Scientific American
On a related note, I have a number of Martin Gardner's books that I want to talk about.
I read GEB many years ago, and came up for air with the realization that it predicted things like AIDS, prions (mad cow disease,) and new viruses that could cause pandemics.
Amazing possibilities, and so many ideas for science fiction stories! It made me wish I could write novels.
It is a readable book. But like everything else, you should not accept every bit of its opinions as an absolute truth. There are places where it comes down to very fundamental technical stuff that it gets a little wrong. It remains an extremely well composed account of the interplay between arts and philosophy on which it has its focus., and as such it has a superior legacy.
What did you learn, though?
I thought only about 3 people ever read this...
I have never been proud to finish a book.
Until I finished that one...
It's an interesting book; Love all the Escher woodcuts and drawings...Some great stories about the endless loop and how it relates to the work of Bach and Godel...I started reading it in 82...I was doing a job (tile) for a UPenn professor of mathematics I mentioned the book to him; to show I wasn't an ignoratzi...He said something that stuck with me all these decades-"No One ever actually read the whole book"...:) It's really not the type of book that requires that though...:)
This record cannot be played on record player A. tavi.
B, A, C ... Kaboom.
Is this Johnny Galecki from The Big Bang Theory?
I read this when I was 20 and it informed my life massively. I was a genius growing up, still am but nobody cares when you are an adult. My father was assassinated when I was 2. The copy belonged to my Uncle who was in a concentration camp in South Africa in the 70s under a Jewish Psychologist. I love how this book is about more than just maths or logic, it's about magic, and the magic of genius.
If you read GEB, then you have to read Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind"
I have one of Penrose's other books also tagged ("Cycles of Time"), so this seems like a shoo-in too.
Also Greg Egan's Permutation City and Diaspora.
Berserk ! 👍
Seriously...aren't you Leonard from the Big Bang Theory???
You look so much to Leonard Hofstadter.
6:40 - Of course he is. I see that you've chose one of his most, umm, playful titles with lots of political satire (among other topics) as the illustration. Not all are like that, but they are all exceptional food for thought.
But thinking is not a form of computation. Computation is a strictly mechanical process with no real "mentality" behind it. Anything you can do with an electronic computer you could, in theory, do with pumps, valves, pipes, and water. It would be huge, but in theory there's nothing stopping us, no matter how complex the computational task under consideration. Would you say a plumbing system is thinking? How about a huge number of dominoes tipping over? Or just marks made on pieces of paper according to a set of rules? No - it's CLEAR that computation is not thought. The whole idea is misguided.
You know that you also contain pumps,valves,pipes ,and water right?
I am imagining a zen diagram in which
the circle representing thought and
the circle representing computation
share an area of intersection,
an area which represents
thoughts that are also computations or
computations that are accomplished by the thinking process.
Oops, I meant Venn diagram.
But a thought is naught but a representation
whose substrate is a neural discharge timing pattern.
And thinking is the intermodulation of these representations
as accomplished via the dynamic analogue logic of synapses.
The self,
which is the only entity in the universe that is or can be conscious,
is the thought that begins existence as a representation of the body but which,
following some considerable experience,
becomes the thought that represents its self
in a strange loop that involves reflection,
metaphorically speaking,
naturally.
GEB and A.i. - Godel’s warning! What’s MORE compelling about GEB, today more than ever, as is the eternal golden braid of self-referencing systems. A Bach fugue or Escher infinite-stairway composition are perfect examples of self-referencing systems (i.e., eternal golden braids). Godel’s incompleteness ruffles feathers, even today! With the exception of, say, Euclidian geometry, no system can be considered complete and consistent. Further, mathematical proofs are, largely self-referencing and self-validating. Art, like Bach and Escher’s works transcend these concepts. Science and Mathematical systems can never be wholly valid (eg: this statement is not true). More interesting are the ramifications for A.i., as science attempts to create ‘predictive’ systems which, in fact, can never be reliable (i.e., FUTURE ‘predictive’ A.i. implementations are, inherently self-referencing and, due to size and complexity, can ONLY be self-validated by other instances of A.i.). Like some of Bach’s or Escher’s works, we only have the illusion of escaping the reality Godel’s theorem cautions. Thus, Godel’s claims remain ever true and we can never escape from ‘playing in a sandbox’.
It is a wonderful book but it has always frustrated me, as has Hofstadter. He teases around the ideas of what thinking consists of without drawing any definite conclusions - other than the idea that Strange Loops must somehow be at the bottom of it. He didn't get into machine learning because he didn't think it had much to do with how human intelligence works, and I agree with him. What I want to know - what we all want to know - is how the brain does its magic. It is an information processor that operates physically. What is the secret?
Google up "orphanogenesis" which is a chapter from a sci-fi novel by Greg Egan. It's mind-blowing, as is the entire book.
The conceptory seems to be a controller that manages seed (gene) expression. (“.. it was crucial for the conceptory to chart the consequences of new variations to the mind seed.) This raises but does not answer the question of abiogenesis - i.e. where did the conceptory come from?
The womb is described as “a virtual machine designed to execute the seed’s instructions”. This is what the cell does through transcription and translation. While the author offers a somewhat flowery description of how the womb does this (When the womb read the seed, the seed’s first shaper caused the space around it to be filled with a simple pattern of data: a single, frozen numerical wave train, sculpted across the emptiness like a billion perfect ranks of sand dunes) it sheds no light on the mechanisms involved. That’s where my interest lies.
I think that Hofstadter is right that recursive chemical processes at many levels produce emergent metabolic regulatory mechanisms that make life possible. The question is, how?
@@fr57ujf "abiogenesis" isn't a thing in Orphanogenesis. The conceptory is a piece of software programmed by humans.
The whole description of "orphanogenesis" is based on actual organogenesis, which is where gradients in hormones cause different genes to express at different places. You can get flies growing legs where antennae belong by screwing with the hormone levels in the eggs.
My interest in that chapter was more in the later parts of it, where the whole "your consciousness is the simulation of you that your hardware is running."
As for "how did actual life actually start," there are lots of hypotheses but none that we've proved for sure. We know how evolution works, but what came before self-replicating molecules subject to transcription errors appeared is unclear, last I looked.
I agree that "your consciousness is the simulation of you that your hardware is running." I would still like to know how that works.
@@fr57ujf Damn. Wouldn't we all?
You're not really talking about mind and thinking. You're mostly just plugging the book. I've read it, so that's not of much use to me.
_Le Ton Beau de Marot_ is really the better book, tho.
You’ve done for me, only an introduction, I don’t yet know what excites your imagination. So Im greatly disappointing by building my curiosity, without any examples…I feel like this is click bait for me. I clicked on your RUclips subject title hoping for some deeper refresher of what I read decades ago. Im still waiting.