It's always good to see what people think someone is saying vs what the person really wants to say especially re: books.
This is Douglas Hofstadter on why GEB.
Conversation
"... a crucial part of my book's argument rests on the idea that meaning cannot be kept out of formal systems when sufficiently complex isomorphisms arise. Meaning comes in despite one's best efforts to keep symbols meaningless."
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Hofstadter was severely disillusioned with his work first as a math student then a physics student and his PhD work in general before he came across a book on Godel's proof that reignited his passion for logic etc.
He dropped out, packed his bags and drove cross country.
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Holy shit. This is some next level commitment.
Hofstadter flew back to Stanford every weekend to redo his book from scratch on a sort of manual printing/typesetting press sometimes working forty hours straight.
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Replying to
This paperback includes a 20th anniversary preface which has commentary from Hofstadter.
The cross country trip anecdote reminded me of one of your posts in the regenerations series (in car at home).
What is with USA, cross country road trips and writers? 🤔
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It's GEB, almost forgot to point that out.
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