I love GEB. It is a masterpiece. But it is important to realize before diving into it that one of the things that makes it a masterpiece is that it is literary, that is, that it contains a wealth of detail that is, strictly speaking, unnecessary to the main point. Drawing a parallel between GEB and James Joyce's Ulysses is actually quite a good analogy. Indeed, Ulysses is almost nothing but "unnecessary detail", to the extent that it makes the book all but unreadable (which, I think, is no small part of its appeal). If you're waiting for either GEB or Ulysses to hurry up and get to the mother fucking point, you're going to be waiting a long time. In that regard, both books are good for techies to read because every now and then it's good to read something that drags you out of your comfort zone and futzes around in all kinds of obscure nooks and crannies before getting to the mother fucking point -- if indeed it ever does. Getting to the point can be important, but there is more to life (and literature).
I love Ulysses and metafiction in general, but when people apply this kind of writing style to philosophy it drives me a bit up the wall. Philosophy at the end of the day is about arguing a point; it isn't about producing an aesthetic experience.
So why would you abuse your reader by making it a pain in the ass to figure out what you mean? I know there are some fancy arguments around stretching limits of language, but none of them seemed all that sensible to me. The only advantage I see to obscurantist writing is that it makes it impossible to critique the philosophers work. Any critique will just be met by the response that you didn't fully understand the author's argument. The Searle/Derrida debates are a great example of this. The upshot is that people spend all their time debating what you actually mean. Which I guess is good for the philosopher's brand, but doesn't advance knowledge much.
This isn't to say that you can't have beautiful writing in philosophy. I think Gaston Bachelard is a great example of both an elegant writer and a clear writer.
That being said, people really really love GEB, so it probably is worth reading regardless of these misgivings. One of these days I'll get to it.
Hahah the whole point of op is that there is value in not always having a point, but meandering, especially for techies. Are you set an proving him right?
I think it'd be more fair to say that GEB is just philosophical navel-gazing with the appearance of some deep philosophical truth... When the actual truth is they cheaped out on editorial staff :D
I got it, and read a portion of it. It was a meandering and badly written mess with no point. It felt like Seinfeld in science-ish form.
You seem deadset on proving original commenter right
Do you have substantive critique? Because the fellow you're responding to is giving substance to his criticism, the parent comment is giving substance, the article is giving substance, and whether GEB has substance is apparently up for debate. If the person you're replying to is deadset on proving the parent right, you are dead set on proving nothing. Please tell us what you disagree with, and the particulars of why, or maybe leave the discussion to the adults.
All this enlightenment but apparently you can't be polite.
Sometimes enlightenment is about knowing when to be impolite.
Haha well I made one point, which was self-evident, the rest I'll leave it to the adults.
I can imagine it being received differently today, but I read it twice in the 80s. It blew my mind. Now you can’t swing a stick without hitting some referent or concept in its pages, but that’s the internet age, efficiently routing the arcane to hypernerds worldwide. It’s made the whole world boring.
Thanks for the context. I'd recently tried reading GEB but couldn't get into it much since I already knew the formal version of the concepts it discusses about. I also have experience of an earlier time when expert knowledge was much less accessible, and where I treasured books like this that tried to compress every ambition within them, since they brought a lot of threads for further edification together in them.
Yeah, that is just typical for Pulitzer Prize winning books. /s
Why do you consider it “navel-gazing”?
This is a funny thing to say about a discipline that was more or less founded by Plato, who was notably obscurantist if not outright esoteric.
In any case, philosophy is not always about making a point and there is not always a point to be made. Sometimes it's just asking questions.
What part of Plato are you referring to? Republic is honestly written at a 10th grade English reading level. The most esoteric work of Plato is Timaeus, but most people do not see that as a foundational text in Western philosophy.
platon didn't speak english, because english wouldn't exist for fifteen more centuries, so he didn't write the republic at any english reading level. the various english translations of it vary greatly in their clarity and readability
i agree that the timaios is platon's most esoteric surviving work, and it's full of enormous amounts of nonsense, but i think it's still reasonably clearly written. sadly, it is a foundational text in not only western philosophy but eastern philosophy as well, and it took twenty centuries for most thinkers to reject most of its erroneous dogmas
First, the "reading level" of Plato depends on the translation, but that's not what I"m talking about. The way most people are exposed to Plato, they're assigned to read his most straight forward texts, but his dialogues are full of mysticism and ideas that he only hints at in the dialogues (particularly in Timaeus and Parminedes) which his students expanded on later. Plato was skeptical of the written word as a means of transmitting ideas and sort of held some ideas back exclusively for his students at the academy who continued to develop them.
This hasn't been my experience of Plato at all. I've always found his dialogs to be written with a surprising clarity. Is there a work in particular you're thinking of?
Parmenides, unless you're really into classical semi-formalized logic and that comes easily as explanation..
When philosophy starts with a real observation (...then words, then discussion), obscurantism is appropriate and expected. Because words can only fit a real observation badly.
When philosophy starts with words, a clear point is expected, for the obvious reasons.
But that's two completely different worlds.
A psychonaout or a shaman would argue some insights are only available on a drug infused spiritual trip.
Musicians talk of flow.
That state of discombobulation you dislike is not to meant to furnish you with answers but rather with new dots to notice and connect on your own. Not everything is a mathematical proof.
I think the real reason this sort of style isn't attractive is because many try to emulate it who lack the talent and then it truly is noise. It is a lot to ask from a reader and the value is rarely there that is well observed.
But sometimes the payoff is worth it. GBE resonates with a lot of people.
This. Philosophy is the grandparent of math. And if there is a point to math, then that there always has to be a proofable point.
I think the problem is a cultural conflict between sub-concious problemsolvers and "concious" problem solvers. The later expect a algorithm , step by step instruction from the former, who when this is demanded, use there subconcious to produce a plausible story. When asked for there inspirations to deduce the process yourself, you get a crows nest of shiny things, bits and pieces, not making a reasonable whole - but they infuriatingly at the end of day do.
Why not accept that there are things you can not directly communicate with and if you are hellbent on becoming such a thing, there is no step-by-step instruction.
> I know there are some fancy arguments around stretching limits of language, but none of them seemed all that sensible to me.
Did you read Robert Kegan "The Evolving Self"? It was pretty popular at HN some time ago. Robert Kegan stretching limits of language and he's got a reason: he introduces some notions like "culture of embeddedness" that you just can't define in a way like dictionaries do, one cannot simply get to a point. Kegan uses another approach, he gives his reader an experience that makes her to understand "culture of embeddedness".
Philosophy by definition deals with uncategorised (or poorly categorised) aspects of our world, with aspects that have no good language to talk about them. Anything that was categorised to a point when there is an accepted language to talk about it is not a philosophy, it is a science or something. Philosophy makes first attempts to categorise and when philosophers found a way then a new branch of science emerges.
When you try to talk about uncategorised things, you just can't talk about it. For example, lets assume that there are no widely accepted categorisation of colors, but you've developed one including names for colors like "blue", "red", "magenta" and so on. How you could communicate your ideas to others? The only way I know is to point to different examples of blue and say "blue", point to red and say "red". You need to lead your audience through experiences of blue/red/magenta while they train their neurons to classify them and only then you can refer to their experiences with words "blue", "red", "magenta" to convey the idea that they always appear in a rainbow in the same sequence. While you keep pointing at different colors saying their names, your audience will probably think, that it takes too long for you to get to a point.
I didn't read GEB, so I cannot say how this reason to "stretch limits of language" relates to it, but you've sad that you know no good reason for such stretching, and I hope that now you know at least one reason for it.
Such sentiments are all very fine, but this is a book about classical music.
I think this statement is both wrong and irrelevant.
Wrong: if you look into GEB, you notice that is has many chapters. And each chapter works on some topic --- and the chapters itself aren't a pain in the ass to figure out what they mean. Not at all. Each chapter transports its goal quite nicely and timely.
Irrelevant: this book is not an academical paper. It's a book meant to amuse you, to enlighten you, to sharpen your thinking skills. An academic paper describing just how Gödel's work works can be a *LOT* thinner --- but, usually, is also a lot dryer.
It's actually the case that this book gives you many good things that help you to understand (and accept or dismiss) such academic papers easier. But even here, mind the "many", if you expect "all" from the book, then you'll be dissatisfied.
I also wouldn't say that GEB is a philosophical book, at least not in the way modern philosophy is understood. If you see it as a book dedicated to like ("philo") wisdom ("sophie"), then it is. But so are most after books in the IT field.
I'd argue that point. Nietzsche's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) comes to my mind first. Art contains and conveys truth.
Nietzsche's work is also a good example about why it's foolish to argue too much about what an author meant. He wasn't always clear in his thoughts - just like us all - and his thinking changed considerably anyway.
Philosophy is defined by the human experience, it is asking questions that do not have readily proveable answers, of answers that are heavily contextual to the individual. The probability of the answers weighed in the individuals head. These probabilities and likeliness to believe more of one philosophy over the other is often primarily from the details.
Details are important because they are little parts that support the likelihood of the larger point being true. If the details don't work it's likely because the theory is innacurate.
Ah, nobody reads Kant anymore; and even if they do, they tend to read just the first critique, stick to the analytic and focus on the "important" sections. You have to read the whole thing! And then, if you're so privileged, and you have to time, nothing is more fruitful than going on towards the Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals, and the Critique of the Power of Judgement. And once you've read that last book, maybe you will begin to understand Derrida. Or even better, you will begin to understand how to critique him.
To be sure, you certainly didn't mean it this way, but for the sake of the poor guy who has seen GEB touted as one of these books that "every programmer/computer scientist/CS major has to read" and sees your post in the same light:
You don't have to read GEB. You will be a fine techie without reading it. And you'll be a fine person in general without reading it. There is no spiritual revelation you can only get from GEB or some important technical knowledge that you'll get that you wouldn't get from a normal CS degree program. Try it out and see if you enjoy Hofstadter's writing - if you do, you might be in for a really enlightening and enjoyable experience. If you don't, no worries - your time is better spent elsewhere - there is no need to put yourself through the pain of slogging through a >700 page book that you don't enjoy. There are many other perfectly fine entry points for learning about topics in computer science, cognitive science, or philosophy of mind.
I didn't read GEB. But I watched this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92WHN-pAFCs
And it's an absolutely brilliant - and very direct - exposition of Alan Turing's Halting theorem.
(unfortunately I can't find analogues of this for many other related subjects)
Some people are saying that GEB is too convoluted, but the base material absolutely doesn't need to be.
Never understood this logical jump in reductio ad absurdum argument. "If one finds a contradiction, therefore the initial premise is wrong". The argument always assumes a binary state, either true or false. It excludes another valid state which is "undefined". The premise of the video above is effectively to prove that one can't build a machine that is capable of resolving a paradox. As if computers have limited capabilities and that they are uncapable to reason the way humans can. But that's not true. If you allow a machine to produce 3 answers, "yes", "true" and "unresolvable", then it is very much possible to build such a machine that produces such output, i.e. detects that a problem is indeed a paradox. By simply implementing this reductio ad absurdum algorithm.
In fact, there is an obvious way how to build a machine that tells whether the program will stop or not. One only needs to track all the states that the machine was in, and if a program enters a state that was already encountered before then it's obviously stuck. And there are only that many permutations of possible states that machine can be in. So a number (time) can be given of when the result will be guaranteed to be found (which of course could be beyond physical resources of the universe, but mathematics are fine not to take those into account)
This is totally true for some models of computation (including some studied in academic computer science), but it's not true for the models of computation that the halting problem applies to, like the Turing machine, which explicitly has an infinite tape and therefore has the potential for an unbounded number of machine states.
In fact, this unboundedness is a core part of what makes these models of computation so expressive. In the Gödel's incompleteness theorem analogy, you can say "there is an integer such that ..." or "there is no integer such that ...". In the Turing machine model, you can write programs that search for counterexamples to mathematical claims. Because these programs are written to try every integer, you can only tell if they eventually halt by yourself resolving the mathematical claim.
For example, we can write a program that tests the Goldbach conjecture or the 3n+1 conjecture by brute force. Determining if these programs' search through all integers will halt or not is equivalent to resolving the status of these conjectures!
although, as schoen and jlokier have patiently explained, you're mistaken about the halting problem, it's a productive and interesting mistake, and others have taken your line of thinking a great deal further than you have even begun to imagine! you may be interested in reading about their work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionistic_logic
The halting problem asks, "Is it possible to write a program which correctly outputs YES or NO to the halting question for every possible input which is the code of a program?"
The binary requirement comes from the question, not a failure to think differently. The consequences of binary requirement with completeness (correct output for every input) is the point.
If you modify the question as you suggest, to output UNRESOLVABLE in exactly the cases where the input is a paradox, that doesn't work either. It is not possible to reliably detect every self-referential paradox, for reasons analogous to (but more complicated than) it not being possible to reliably say for every program if it will eventually halt.
Even so, it is possible to write a program which outputs UNRESOLVABLE in cases where that particular implementation of a halt-test program gets stumped and gives up despite there being another correct answer it hasn't found, or when it detects specific patterns. But that's more about hitting arbitrary limits of a particular implementation, so not as interesting theoretically. It is what you'd do in practice, if someone asked you to write a halting detector in the real world.
The halting problem computation model has unlimited memory. Sometimes people say this means you can "solve" the halting problem in practice because real machines have bounded memory, therefore finite states, which must eventually repeat if a program does not halt. But this isn't really a solution, because the halt-test program needs exponentially more memory than the input program would be allowed if run. However you look at it, that is not "in practice", it is prevented by computational inaccessibility, and it also doesn't satisfy the principle of the halting problem, which is to ask if halt-test can be written in the same kind of universal programming system as the programs it analyses. (Besides, you can run programs with unlimited memory, by always being willing to pause, upgrade machine, and resume, whenever current memory is filled.)
When analysed with denotational semantics, there actually is a third output called "bottom" (⊥) which means "mathematical value representing doesn't terminate". But even using mathematical approaches, there is no way to calculate when that's the output for all possible inputs to a correct halt-test function.
Right. And to be sure, GEB might have Godel in the name, but it's not really a book about Godel's incompleteness theorems. It mentions them, but that is not really the main thrust of the book. It's not a book about Godel, Escher, and/or Bach, really (though of course it discusses the ideas of these three people a lot). Hofstadter, if I recall correctly, even says as much (or something along these lines) in the preface.
So of course, there are more to-the-point resources for the technical concepts that Hofstadter employs. It's an understandable misconception to have when people so often say GEB is a must-read for techies and when it has a name that includes "Godel". So remember - GEB is about Hofstadter trying to argue for a point about a particular thesis (how the mind ("I") arises from the brain), and to that end, he employs many different concepts (many of which are from computer science) and explains them poetically (at least, a lot of people think so). But teaching you these concepts is just a secondary, even tertiary, goal of his. If you find his writing engaging, it might be a more fun way to learn about that stuff - but if not, don't worry, GEB wasn't primarily written to teach you anyway. I'm sure even the biggest GEB fans will agree.
It sounds like you're making a distinction between the plot and the theme.
I'd argue the plot is entirely about Godel's incompleteness theorem. It's not just "mentioned in passing", the entire book is centered around a series of increasingly complex explanations that culminate in explaining the actual theorem itself.
But just like a good novel is way, way more than just the plot, GEB is way more than just the Godel incompleteness theorem.
Personally I didn't really find any other thesis or theme that compelling. However, I absolutely loved the clever ways in which he illustrated each concept. Others may have appreciated other aspects of it, and that's great too. Many people can enjoy the book for different reasons.
100%
The Godel proof chapter feels like the apotheosis of the book. The rest almost feels tacked on, e.g. the whole dna-computing ... , even the "strange loops" part, which I would not think is the main crux of the book.
I shouldn't have said "mentioned" to insinuate "mentioned in passing", you are right. But no, though it plays a central role in his argument, GEB is not about Godel's incompleteness theorem (I believe Hofstadter even says as much in the preface, and he laments that readers didn't get the overall point of the book - though I don't have my copy with me to confirm, so I might be misremembering exactly what he says).
But anyway - you and anyone else of course are free to enjoy Hofstadter's explanations of Godel's incompleteness theorem - maybe you even think that it is the best/most interesting/most fun/most insightful explanation. I just mean to say that Hofstadter isn't writing this book primarily to explain technical concepts - his explanations are a means to an end. So someone who struggles to get through this book shouldn't feel bad - its main goal was never to be a "must-read for programmers" anyway.
In 30 years I have read about 50 pages and looked at all the pictures. Does that count as reading it :-)
Ok, for us the lazy, what is mother fucking the point of GEB? A single HN karma point from me is on offer for the honest answers.
When systems (think "automated" systems like computer programs, mathematical axioms, formal systems, etc, where conclusions can be drawn/calculated "mechanically" from a few starting points) get large enough, they gain the ability to become self-referential. That is, they become expressive enough to encode statements about themselves. A hallmark of this are "incompleteness theorems" like those of Godel or the Turing halting problem.
The book argues that these "strange loops" (of a system onto itself) are behind the emergence of intelligence and consciousness, because physical matter itself gives rise to human intelligence, albeit being a mechanical system.
I can appreciate a book being obscure or dragging things out when it is trying to give the reader an aesthetic experience. But this point seem to be one that would easiest be communicated clearly and succinctly.
Or is the point "there is so much mystery in these systems that perhaps there is room for an explanation for consciousness"? Maybe then I would be more sympathetic.
Or perhaps I should just read the book before condemning it :)
the point of the book is to give supporting evidence and guide the reader to the conclusion through testimony of thought and historical anecdote.
in other words, GEB tries to coax the reader into a eureka moment, which is exactly why it has so many fans; it convinced each and every one of us that we were genius for just a split second.
Good summary. Examples of GEB’s “fluff” are missing from this comment section, so I wanted to jump in and add one of my favorite. Bach encoded his own name in music notes in a piece, and when discussing that, Hofstadter encodes a sentence in the first letter of each paragraph in that chapter.
Great examples buddy.(I know it's bad).
GEB’s point is that self-reference - the ability for a system to “talk about itself” - is crucial for conciousness and for real artificial intelligence.
I think it's a reflection on intelligence overall, not just artificial intelligence.
In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.
— Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, p. 363
It's turtles all the way down
I've heard about this book so many times and was interested to read it. But I know that as a non native English reader, my track record against reading English proses is very poor, and looks like lots of value of the book is exactly in the prose? Maybe I'll have to skip this one, unless some brave souls have already translated it.
The Dutch translation of GEB is excellent. I think others, e.g. the French, are also quite good/excellent, potentially because Hofstadter himself was quite involved in the translation process. Hell, much of GEB and especially his later books discuss translation extentensively, so it would be strange if there were authorized translations of GEB that were somehow lacking in quality.
Crucially the French translation was significantly rewritten, with contributions from Hofstadter. In doing so, the French version becomes a separate projection of the author’s original ideas, along a different vector than the original English version. The approach therefore illustrates the main point of the book, similarly to its cover. Very meta. :)
i had no idea; now i have to read it, because i've only read the english original and part of one of the spanish translations
Hofstadter wrote another interesting book regarding translation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot
I don’t know what language you speak, but GEB it’s been translated into multiple languages during the years.
I read it in Italian as a teen, the Italian edition is beautiful, and incredibly well translated (the book includes many puns and language tricks.)
It's Indonesian, which as I have guessed, doesn't have one at least as far as I google it. But it's astonishing that this kind of book have so many translations! Even into Chinese, wow! I guess it's truly one of most influential book.
But if memory serves the translators of the Italian version removed a whole chapter of it (I might have to check details because I am far from both my author-signed English edition and the Italian one I bought many years later).
Is it also valid to draw a comparison to Gravity's Rainbow, or parts 2 and 3 of The Divine Comedy? I ask, because those were on a tier of their own for being impenetrable (to me); I'm worried this will go the same way, but am otherwise intrigued.
Unrelated: Does anyone know of how to get an epub etc of this? Unavailable through Amazon etc.
I would suggest against an epub. I tried finding one too, only to realize the formatting of the book is ill-suited for anything but its original printed format (it’s far too particular for the epub format). Maybe give your local library a try?
Hell is just inherently more interesting to the human mind than paradise or purgatory. I read Ulysses with a book group and a leader that had read it in grad school and a number of books that exist to explain Ulysses. I read GEB as a fourteen year old with no internet access and it changed my life, but the ending isn’t that important. The proof of how the incompleteness theorem works and the stuff on Koans is I think most of the meat.
There are several copies on Internet Archive.
Gravity’s Rainbow. I never finished it. It’s more like One Hundred Years of Solitude though; GEB isn’t fiction
libgen.rs
I was always apprehensive of reading Ulysses… until I did. And then I read some basic analysis of it and then read it again and now I’m slightly baffled why people find it _that_ difficult. Yes it’s not at all typical but it’s really not that hard and it’s definitely no Finnegan’s Wake. Now that’s a challenge!
I mean lots of the lore is just residual 16 year old’s getting into reading stuff. You read l’Estranger (translated), decide you’re an intellectual, and so have a go at Ulysses cos it’s the hardest one and so suitable for you, an intellectual. The internet has been a good transmission vector for the sentiment.
If your ideas about cooking come from watching Masterchef (analogously), you might treat the idea of making a beurre blanc as a similar act of conquest, triumph in the face of splitting adversity whilst a thousand-voice choir crescendos in the background as you whisk. But a million french housewives happily made it for decades having never been told it’s impossible, and indeed knowing better that it isn’t.
Hah! Nice cooking analogy :)
Everybody is cooking in France, not only housewives, it's a part of being French.
I like them apples.
Personally, I believe that the distinction between "unnecessary detail" and "the point" is mostly subjective and in the mind of the reader.
The point of a book is to get the reader to reach a certain understanding. Every brain is different and while one literary path might get some readers to that destination, other paths may be required for others. But there is no singular point of understanding that exists solely at the end of that path. The path itself is what builds that understanding.
Part of the art of writing is covering a large enough space of multiple paths to get most readers there without too many of them getting lost.
There is a very clear distinction between details and main point. If you assume that there is no main point in a text, you negate all that the writer is trying to communicate.
You're asserting a dichotomy that I didn't make.
Often, writing is like a connect-the-dots drawing where those points are the written details and the point is the overall shape. Yes, there is a "main point" that is not those details. But it's the details that convey it. Subtract all of them, and the shape disappears.
For any given reader, some of those detail points won't resonate with them and will be basically ignored. But as long as there are enough other details, they will still trace the right shape and get the overall point.
A big part of the art of writing is figuring out which constellation of details will lead to the right shape being traced in the minds of as many readers as possible.
Maybe I've been reading books the wrong way my whole life, but I never assume there's a singular "main point" in the text. I mean, why would one waste time writing 100 or 1000 page text circling around some single point for the reader to guess, instead of spelling it clearly up front, and then arguing for it?
And to be fair Hofstadter got the message and wrote "I Am a Strange Loop" for people who just want the to the point version.
I wonder if anyone on the Pulitzer Prize committee for GEB understood this was the idea he was attempting to communicate. There seems to be a large market for books that make dumb people feel smart.
Ha I tried reading I Am a Strange Loop and found that meandering and verbose too. Didn’t finish it. He really labors the “greater than sum of parts” point for example. Ugh
I have not read Ulysses but I have read other works from Joyce and cannot imagine comparing him to Hofstadter. I put GEB in the same mental box as Sophie's World or the Mr. Tompkins books, where story is used as a means to the end of teaching something to an audience that would otherwise find the material unpalatable.
They both loved word play and enjoyed examples as much as they enjoyed generalities.
It is funny that you bring Ulysses into it. I’ve tried reading both GEB and Ulysses multiple times and had to concede defeat every time somewhere between the 100 and 200 page mark. The same goes for the satanic verses. I suppose my mind just wants a book to get to the point more than it wants to get to the end.
Actually, the original article did that. I just followed the author's lead here.
Well said. It won Pulizer for a reason. It's not for learning facts, its for thinking. GEB ponders and it's masterfully written.
I can also recommend Metamagical Themas from Hofstadter. It's a collection of articles he wrote for Scientific American.
Thanks. Bailed on the motherfucker for this reason and will have to revisit.
meta-question: Do you have any idea why Joyce called the novel "Ulysses" (latin) and not "Odyssey" (greek)?
ps. Haven't read the novel yet, it is in my queue.