I couldn't agree more! It's not that #Idontlike Douglas #Hofstadter's Gödel Escher Bach: there are some brilliant ideas in it. But I don't get all the fuzz around this book. It aims very high: showing recursion as an unifying pattern of maths, #CognitiveScience and art, in a recursive manner... But the result is quite verbose, with a lot of hand-waving. Honestly, I prefer a book like "Metamagical themas", where Hofstadter shares his reflections on these topics without trying to add stylistic effects.
https://mastodon.social/users/alatitude77/statuses/100322535956471172 @alatitude77 #bookstodon #GödelEscherBach

I couldn't agree more! It's not that #Idontlike Douglas #Hofstadter's Gödel Escher Bach: there are some brilliant ideas in it. But I don't get all the fuzz around this book. It aims very high: showing recursion as an unifying pattern of maths, #CognitiveScience and art, in a recursive manner... But the result is quite verbose, with a lot of hand-waving. Honestly, I prefer a book like "Metamagical themas", where Hofstadter shares his reflections on these topics without trying to add stylistic effects.
https://mastodon.social/users/alatitude77/statuses/100322535956471172 #bookstodon #GödelEscherBach

Numbers are strange.

(I'm reading #GödelEscherBach, BTW. 😉)

OK. I did it and bought the English original of #GödelEscherBach. It's surprisingly easy to read (and hopefully understand 😀). During the ≈30 years since I got the German translation I learned some additional English, it seems. 😄

The 23-page preface added some interesting additional context. – And I do wonder what the additional 20 years since the 20th anniversary edition have brought us. 😃

Getting a bit philosophical while rereading a translation of ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach’, wondering how much information got lost due to the translation – and which parts of it. If any…

And how much would still be lost, even if I read the English original (given that I’m not a native English speaker).

#GödelEscherBach

Decided on the book to read over the holidays: 'Gödel, Esche, Bach'. Douglas R. Hofstadter. Klett Kotta. 6. printing. 1985.

Nineteenhundreteightyfive – that's why it's the German translation. 🙂

Wanted to read the English ebook edition, but the preview was disappointing (to say the least) and the reviews complained about it being a badly scanned and OCRed version. 🤷‍♂️

#GödelEscherBach

One important lesson of (nearly) every #AdventOfCode puzzle: It's not as simple as it looks at the beginning.

It's a lesson to be remembered for work…: Most people underestimate the effort, even when they take this into account. See #HofstadtersLaw ➙ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_law

#GödelEscherBach #Hofstadter