{"id":593,"date":"2002-06-18T18:40:36","date_gmt":"2002-06-19T02:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/06\/18\/gdel-escher-bach-an-enternal-golden-braid\/"},"modified":"2022-03-07T10:26:53","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T18:26:53","slug":"gdel-escher-bach-an-enternal-golden-braid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/06\/18\/gdel-escher-bach-an-enternal-golden-braid\/","title":{"rendered":"G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:15171,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/0465026567\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260313150033\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/0465026567\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/0465026567\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 04:57:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 04:57:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Ow.<\/p>\n<p>Ow ow ow.<\/p>\n<p>My brain hurts.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good kind of hurt, though. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0465026567\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter\">G&ouml;del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid<\/a> is an exploration of everything from mathematics to the mechanics of thought and reasoning to Artificial Intelligence, all tied together and interrelated to each other. Fascinating, fascinating stuff.<\/p>\n<p>My big difficulty is that I am really <em>not<\/em> a math person, so whenever the chapters moved into that realm, I had to muddle my way through as best I could until he moved on to something else that I could comprehend more easily. I haven&#8217;t had to work this hard to read and understand a book in a long, long time &#8212; and I&#8217;ve got to say, I enjoyed it (though I did need to let my brain relax with a bit more light reading afterwards).<\/p>\n<p>Some of the concepts are a bit dated, especially in the areas of AI &#8212; the book was first published in 1979, and there&#8217;s been a lot of progress since then &#8212; but the core concepts that he deals with are most likely the same that we&#8217;re dealing with today, just from more advanced positions.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, neat stuff &#8212; definite brain food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This book is an exploration of everything from mathematics to the mechanics of thought and reasoning to Artificial Intelligence, all tied together and interrelated to each other. Fascinating, fascinating stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036],"tags":[2200],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-douglas-hofstadter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}