Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
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Book Reviews of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Book Review: Thought, Art and Criticism an endless natural ACT.
Summary: 5 Stars
What marks a book as distinctive? What makes a book THE ONE, which you would never dream of lending, even to your mother?Leave aside that it deals with a very basic subject, something that is the very core of 'being human'. Leave aside that even if the content was not up to standard, the presentation itself would have succeeded in winning the day. Leave aside that every sentence brings out not only the power of the author's brain, but manages to bring out the power of the reader's brain too.
What would still make it distinctive is the amount of passionate discussion it has, and to my continuing surprise, goes on generating.
Whether you agree with the thoughts of the author or whether they make u rail in outrage, the fact remains that is one of the best thought-provoking books you can lay your hands on. Personally, i agree with DRH that 'full blown' AI is just a matter of time and computing efforts. But even those who are enraged by this thought and who think that Intelligence is 'God's gift' much as the early christians believed that the earth was the center of the universe cannot deny the value of this book in stirring up meaningful debate on that basic question.
The way DRH moves the reader, with entertaining Achilles-Tortoise dialogues and mind-bending escherian prints, through an understanding of thought and current AI concepts and where in the future the twain would probably meet, is nothing short of masterful. The hidden loops and meta-loops add a delightful tang to the book and makes every re-read seem like a fresh one.
To conclude, there are precious few books worth buying, reading completely, possessing jealously and re-reading. Without doubt, this is one of them.
Book Review: the Book of the books
Summary: 5 Stars
For me this book has become the "Book of the books"....how to say...? I mean, it is something more than a simple book that you can find in the open shelves worldwide. The book is `just' about self-reference and self-referential systems and Hofstadter explains you that self-reference is that fundamental `natural' law which moves everything, at every level of complexity as the human intelligence can recognize it: in music, mathematics, art, physics, genetics,...and so on. Hofstadter has the exceptional skill of making the reader to understand these concepts by means of lots of examples, simplified images borrowed from every field of human knowledge, just step by step towards the deep understanding of the so destabilizing Godel's Theorem of Incompleteness. "Gödel, Escher, Bach" is the book which makes you to think and to develop your thinking even beyond the contents of the book itself, trying to catch what should be the last and fardest level of the self-referential systems. The book is however structured in order to talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and how powerful such an intelligence can become if just we can really fully understand how our own brain does work, since AI is 'simply' a way for creating something perfectly imitating ourselves, without being God. And such a process is a so-called a 'strange loop', because we have to go inside our self for creating something outside it. In conclusion, the book represented for me something like "Wonderland" (actually, the reference to Lewis Carrol is a constant in the book), and more..., because once you finished it, you realizes that the book itself is a strange loop as well, and that you would like to start to read it again...and again....Book Review: just the "Book of the books"
Summary: 5 Stars
For me this book is just the "Book of the books"....how to say...? I mean, it is something more than a simple book that you can find in the open shelves worldwide. This book is `just' about self-reference and self-referential systems and Hofstadter explains you that self-reference is just that fundamental `natural' law which moves everything, at every level of complexity as the human intelligence can recognize it: in music, mathematics, art, physics, genetics,....and so on. Hofstadter has the exceptional skill of making the reader to understand this concepts by means of lots of examples, simplified images borrowed from every field of human knowledge, just step by step towards the deep understanding of the so destabilizing Godel's Theorem of Incompleteness. "Gödel, Escher and Bach" is the book which makes you to think and to develop your thinking even beyond the contents of the book itself, trying to catch what should be the last and fardest level of the self-referential systems. The book is however structured in order to talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how powerful such an intelligence can become if just we can really fully understand how our own brain does work, since AI is just a way for creating something perfectly imitating ourselves, without being God. And this is just a 'strange loop', because we have to go inside our self for creating something outside it. In conclusion, the book represented for me something like "Wonderland" (actually, the reference to Lewis Carrol is a constant in the book), and more...Because, once you finished it you realizes that the book itself is a strange loop as well, and that you would like to start to read it again...and again....
Book Review: A book that is about more than Godel, Escher, and Bach
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is an excellent introduction to several ideas in cognitive science, biology, mathematics, linguistics, computer science, art, and other fields. It cleverly reveals how different fields influence each other in a cross disciplinary fashion and actually "embeds" this structure inside the book. I won't go into more detail, but as soon as you read the book, you will see how this is done. The writing is crisp and engaging, almost as if Lewis Carroll, Noam Chomsky, and your favorite professor in college gave birth to a book. The concepts are revealed through parables, koans, and other forms involving characters named Tortoise, Achilles, and Crab and at one point involve a metagenie.(...)The only criticisms that I have about the book are
1)Some radically new things have been discovered/done in many of the fields discussed in the book, especially artificial intelligence. The book doesn't talk about some of these developments, and some of the statements in the book are inaccurate or outdated (ex: chess playing computer that can beat human will never be built, replication in biolgy is A LOT more complicated/different than its rather cursory rendering in this book)
2)This book is more helpful as an introduction to spark your interest in various topics than a detailed guide to the many interesting ideas that have arisen in science. After reading about concepts in the book, if they are interesting, it would be helpful to read a more detailed and recent book on the topic.
3)Sometimes, but not usually, the author's desire to be witty or find connections overwelms the actual truth of his statements--at these points the connections made are rather weak.
Book Review: GEB, garbage, pseudo-science??
Summary: 5 Stars
"Gödel's theorem concerns a problem in "formal logic" and has nothing to do with human-cogno-something." says a reviewer, and concludes that H's treatment of G's theorem is "complete garbage"?!
Firstly, I have a problem with people who use insulting labels.
Secondly, it's even worse when they motivate this not with actual arguments, but by stating their (perceived) scientific status INSTEAD ("I am convinced anyone with a degree of mathematics will agree with me.") Truth be said, you can get a degree in math without even coming close to G's incompleteness theorem. Not only do I not agree with the reviewer, but I happen to think H's presentation is the best out there.
Thirdly, G's theorem is indeed one of formal logic. But to say that it has "nothing to do with human-cogno-something" is to beg the question against the very book you're reviewing. One of the main points of GEB is to explain how G's theorem could be relevant to cognitive science. The reviewer effectively disregards all the arguments presented in the book, and simply STATES that there is no connection :)
Finally, about the "alchemy and pseudo-science" part: GEB is not a science book (and is not presented as one). True, the author has a very distinguished scientific career, but GEB is a book written to popularize science, not to present new results to peers. Of course some ideas are far-fetched, poetic, speculative - that's exactly what I would expect from a book with the title of "GEB" :)
In conclusion, this type of review is pretty useless - I like critical, even negative reviews, but let them have some meat, not only poor style and truncated understanding :)