Comments on: I am a strange loop.

I am a strange loop.

loquacious — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:30:41 -0800

Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid has been recorded as a series of video lectures for MIT's Open Courseware project.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:37:53 -0800

(Psst, click here for Real Alternative if you want to play Real Media files without Satan's favorite little helper, RealPlayer)

By: doctor_negative

doctor_negative — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:44:29 -0800

MIT uses Real Media, that's just sad.

By: Joe Beese

Joe Beese — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:44:45 -0800

I look forward to the flaming Tu-Ba debate.

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:49:27 -0800

I am a strange loop.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:50:14 -0800

Why are they still using real media? Someone needs to post these to youtube.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:52:32 -0800

Is heterological heterological?

By: TypographicalError

TypographicalError — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:18:30 -0800

I was going to listen to these, but I got bored after about an eighth of them, and now I just tell people I listened to them so I can sound smart.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:20:44 -0800

(Psst, click here for Real Alternative if you want to play Real Media files without Satan's favorite little helper, RealPlayer) Unless you have a Mac. But I don't think it's as necessary for MacOS to avoid RealPlayer.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:24:08 -0800

and now I just tell people I listened to them so I can sound smart. They're videos, with chalkboard examples and stuff. You missed out on the Mu Puzzle, which means you lose.

By: woodblock100

woodblock100 — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:35:43 -0800

but I got bored after about an eighth of them Then maybe you're in the wrong place; it's all about Meta thinking ...

By: degrees_of_freedom

degrees_of_freedom — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:46:48 -0800

Typo was being meta. The joke is that GEB is notoriously unfinished by many who profess to love it.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:51:14 -0800

He's very dense, but not very fast. Hofstadter. The lecturer in the videos is a bit dry. I tried splashing some whiskey on him but I forgot I ran out of pushing and popping potions and I just got my computer wet. I miss my copy of the book. I need to stop lending that out, it never comes back.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:56:00 -0800

Hrm, the damn hardcover edition is big enough for a solar powered GPS/GSM module embedded in the spine. *adds to lazyweb to do list*

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:59:43 -0800

Every single person I knew who was either educated or imagined himself educated was geeking out about GEB when I was a kid, to the point that I'm practically traumatized by it. I have never been able to read it for that reason. He himself might be spectacularly good, but all I experienced was the fallout among the pseuds and my god was it agonizing to be around. That's not to say I've read nothing by him. I do blame Hofstadter for the "subconscious sexism in the English language" thing, for setting off a biggest cultural fit of prissy, clumsy, point-missing selfconscious linguistic asswipery in the history of verbal communication.

By: ornate insect

ornate insect — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:39:34 -0800

It appears DH will be teaching a class on Eugene Onegin (one of his preoccupations) this coming fall: ...[we] will try to figure out why it is that no English (French, German, etc.) translation of Eugene Onegin, no matter how sublime, has captured the imagination of English-speaking (French-speaking, German-speaking, etc.) readers to any significant degree, and whether this extremely sad failure is due to the intrinsic nontranslatability of poetry, or due to the extremely different histories and sets of values belonging to Russia and Western European countries, or due to the failure of marketing efforts by publishers, or due to arbitrary prejudices and fads in the intelligentsia and in the public at large, or due to apathy or laziness on the part of the reading public, or even possibly due to the inordinate amount of sway held by certain key influential naysayers, most of all the Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov, whose non-verse translation of Eugene Onegin was also, in effect, a vehement, vociferous, and in some ways violent assertion of the supposed "mathematical impossibility" of successfully translating Eugene Onegin into any other language.

By: TypographicalError

TypographicalError — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:11:14 -0800

I tried to view these in my browser that renders all webpages, but it didn't work. What's up with that? I like this joke better than my first one.

By: Monday, stony Monday

Monday, stony Monday — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:13:43 -0800

I don't read Russian. But according to André Markowicz, who did write a successful (according to my prof who wrote her thesis on the untranslability of Pushkin) translation of Eugen Onegin, a large part of what made Western translations of the novel was that they did not include the traces of the novel censored by the Czar that Pushkin left in the original.

By: parudox

parudox — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:37:07 -0800

Typo was being meta. The joke is that GEB is notoriously unfinished by many who profess to love it. Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

By: bottlebrushtree

bottlebrushtree — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:37:32 -0800

It took me a decade to read the first 100 pages and then 10 days to read the rest of the book. I don't know what finally changed.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:47:45 -0800

That's not to say I've read nothing by him. I do blame Hofstadter for the "subconscious sexism in the English language" thing, for setting off a biggest cultural fit of prissy, clumsy, point-missing selfconscious linguistic asswipery in the history of verbal communication. I'm not trying to pick a fight but you're not exactly refuting his point, here.

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:55:00 -0800

Not trying to, loq. Hell, I went to hear him speak about it in person and his points were perfectly valid. But dear god almighty, what a boon it was for people who look for ways to put others on the defensive, preferably in perfect ambush when it's not expected. It was a golden gift to them, though doubtless unintended.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:32:56 -0800

No loquacious, for that we have Dinosaur Comics. Er, excuse me, Dynosoar Cawmics.

By: empath

empath — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:55:43 -0800

what's the best way to listen to this on mac if i don't want to install real player crap?

By: empath

empath — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:06:42 -0800

oh, man, i'm so disappointed. It's just a class teaching the book, not the book itself. I don't think of myself as supersmart, but I didn't have the slightest bit of difficulty understanding the book when I read it, and I read it when i was 19 or 20. Why would MIT students need to take a class to understand it? It's a popular science book, written for a general audience.

By: vernondalhart

vernondalhart — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:16:08 -0800

George_Spiggott: If you don't feel like reading GEB because of traumatic experiences earlier, I strongly reccomend considering (if you can find a copy) Le Ton Beau do Marot. It is one of the most wonderful books I've ever read. It's playful, it's fun, it's an exquisite meditation on the nature of language and translation. It is, however, a little tricky to find. Check Powell's.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:00:47 -0800

I don't think of myself as supersmart, but I didn't have the slightest bit of difficulty understanding the book when I read it I do think of myself as supersmart, and I double majored in Math and Philosophy back in the day, and after four times through the book, I still skip a lot of the symbolic logic minutiae because it makes my brain hurt. So you must be fucking mutant. It's a popular science book, written for a general audience. You have a much higher estimation of average folks than I do. I'd be surprised if one person in 100, hell, one in 500 in the general population (present company excepted) could follow much if any of GED.

By: Casuistry

Casuistry — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:19:42 -0800

Now I want to reread it, because I also don't remember it being that tricky. But I also remember that there were some things which I just didn't worry about, because I got the basic idea enough to know what he was driving at (when I was 17ish), even if I didn't "do the math" myself. But I also remember it as a pop science/math book, aimed at a MetaFilter-type crowd.

By: saul wright

saul wright — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:29:51 -0800

I highly recommend 'The Minds I' (a collection of essays and short stories edited and commented on by Hofstadter and Dennett) to anyone who had trouble finishing GEB. It's fantastic and a much easier read, while touching upon similar ideas.

By: readyfreddy

readyfreddy — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:36:36 -0800

GEB... yes! RM... no!

By: The Bellman

The Bellman — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:49:07 -0800

So you must be fucking mutant. Does fucking mutant make you super smart? Because then we should probably be asking Mrs. Mutant our finance questions, not him. I don't think of myself as super smart and I've never understood most of GEB. Where does that place me?

By: danb

danb — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:53:59 -0800

I pick up this goddamn monstrosity every time I see it at a bookstore but I haven't taken the plunge yet. One day!

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:11:47 -0800

I toted GEB around when I was about 15 or so with all the concomitant risks that entails. Really enjoyed it, too. And happily, I was then socially perceptive enough to reject the advances of the Mensa crowd who would swarm around me upon seeing it, gathered to the book like moths.

By: zouhair

zouhair — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:13:15 -0800

Stupid realplayer!

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:22:15 -0800

I think a lot of it depends on what you mean by "understand." I mean, a lot of the book is spent pointing out big, interconnected mysteries in different fields. It's not hard to look where the book's pointing and say "Yep, sure enough, there's something mysterious over there." But they're also the sort of deep, inexhaustible mysteries that you can spend your whole life mulling over and tinkering with and still never solve them. If you want that sort of understanding, the kind that lets you dust your hands off, put the problem aside once and for all, let's move on to something else — well, it's not gonna happen. So in a sense, if the math is making your head spin, you've gotten it — you've looked where the author was pointing and seen that, yes indeed, there's something weird and vertiginous and hairy going on. After that, how much time you want to spend gleefully wallowing in the vertigo is up to you.

By: wobh

wobh — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:49:43 -0800

Double? There's more about what to do about the realmedia problems. There's more criticism of GEB in the earlier thread. Maybe it's not a double as much as a loop and we can let it slide.

By: Karmadillo

Karmadillo — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:06:20 -0800

Thanks for posting this. It gives me one more thing to add to my summer list of things I will start but fail to finish. After I crash and burn on GEB, I think I'll set myself up for defeat by The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose. ^{wishes someone had told him he would regret not taking more science and math when he was in college and had a brain that was at least semi-functioning}

By: Joe Beese

Joe Beese — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:14:55 -0800

Meanwhile, that demon's thingamabob is still rolling dice up in the clock tower.

By: Who_Am_I

Who_Am_I — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:21:00 -0800

If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.

By: Multicellular Exothermic

Multicellular Exothermic — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:32:24 -0800

Karmadillo, I heard Roger Penrose speak about his work in, I think, the late '80s. He asked if the people in the back of room could hear him, thanked the audience for coming out, and that's the last thing he said that I understood.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:53:52 -0800

empath: I'm not sure there is a Mac alternative for RealPlayer. But then, the Mac version of RealPlayer isn't the horrid scourge that the Win version is. Really, it's safe. Download, install and run. It won't take over.

By: dmd

dmd — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:00:12 -0800

One quite unnerving puzzle, mentioned in one of the dialogs, is a speculation concerning an author who writes a book and chooses to end the book without actually stopping the narrative, as is the usual procedure. As an author can't have a sudden ending come as a surprise when the physical fact that there are only a few pages left of the book is obvious to the reader, such an author might wrap up the main point, and then continue writing, but drop clues to the reader that the end has already passed, such as wandering and unfocused prose, misstatements, or contradictions. Then, as you read the last parts of that same dialog — or, some might say, GEB as a whole — you can't help but notice some peculiarities. — (me, some years ago)

By: Bort

Bort — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:20:22 -0800

After I crash and burn on GEB, I think I'll set myself up for defeat by The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose. I highly recommend NOT reading "The Road to Reality." I took quite a few advanced math courses in college and can't begin to understand that book past the first 50 pages or so. It seems to be written for those that already understand the concepts.

By: Quietgal

Quietgal — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:22:41 -0800

I read GEB when I was in graduate school studying biochemistry, and noticed a small error in Hofstadter's description of DNA structure. (He said the "deoxy" referred to a missing oxygen on a phosphate group, whereas it really refers to a missing hydroxyl group on the ribose.) Anyway, I wrote to him respectfully offering this correction and he sent a very nice hand-written letter back, thanking me and saying several people had already explained this, and mentioning that he was planning to be in my area later that year. So I invited him to give a seminar in my department, which he actually did. Unfortunately, his seminar topic was far removed from the type of research my department did and turnout was embarrassingly low; the only people who showed up were those who had a copy of GEB for Hofstadter to sign. He was very gracious about it, and seemed like a very nice and enthusiastic guy all around. I finished GEB feeling that there was a lot I didn't grok the first time through, but never went back to re-read it. Maybe I need to listen to these lectures - thanks, loquacious. I'm ashamed to admit I can't remember what the heck he talked about - it went right over my head at the time and right out of my head shortly afterwards. Man, what lame "brush with celebrity" stories I've got. And nobody got drunk and puked on anybody's shoes, either. Meh.

By: TypographicalError

TypographicalError — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:25:22 -0800

In all honesty, I find GEB an eternal goddamn bore. But maybe it's because it's glacially slow and far too cute for its own good.

By: AsYouKnow Bob

AsYouKnow Bob — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:26:25 -0800

empath: It's a popular science book, written for a general audience. stavrosthewonderchicken: You have a much higher estimation of average folks than I do. Well, granted that the book itself is supposed to make your brain hurt, but MIT's Open Courseware Project says that these lectures *about* GED are intended for high-school students.

By: effbot

effbot — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:50:19 -0800

Why are they still using real media? Someone needs to post these to youtube. MIT is posting tons of OpenCourseWare stuff to YouTube (you've all seen YouTube Edu, I hope?), but this one doesn't seem to be there yet. Maybe someone could send them a nice mail asking for it?

By: tommasz

tommasz — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:29:01 -0800

I've read it multiple times, but I don't love it. I would liken the experience to running a marathon, it's way more enjoyable in retrospect than while it was occurring although you would never tell your friends that.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:39:22 -0800

it's way more enjoyable in retrospect than while it was occurring although you would never tell your friends that. You just described how I feel about the Austin Powers films exactly.

By: rikschell

rikschell — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:51:01 -0800

For smaller doses of Hofstadter that add up to much the same, you could try Metamagical Themas, a collection of his columns from SciAm. I found it at a used book sale and have been fascinated with it since (I even bought a Rubik's cube to try out some of his suggestions). I think some people dislike or don't get him because he's hard to classify, neither pure art nor pure science, neither fish nor fowl. But this is one of the reasons I really like him. He doesn't have a lot of books, but what he writes he writes for a general audience. He likes questions more than answers, and you always get the sense that he's at play. Thanks for the post.

By: decagon

decagon — Sun, 31 May 2009 10:04:02 -0800

You just described how I feel about the Austin Powers films exactly. Ah yes, GEB and the Austin Powers films. Kindred texts in so many ways. Oh, behave, sentient locus of self-reference!

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 31 May 2009 11:48:49 -0800

Ah yes, GEB and the Austin Powers films. Kindred texts in so many ways. Oh, behave, sentient locus of self-reference! *contemplates recreating the lectures as Mr. Powers and realizes even THAT will be more amusing to talk about afterwards than actually watch*

By: empath

empath — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:01:57 -0800

Well, But they're also the sort of deep, inexhaustible mysteries that you can spend your whole life mulling over and tinkering with and still never solve them. Well, there's a difference between reading a Brief History of Time and being an astrophysicist, to be sure. I didn't mean to say that I read GEB and figured out the solutions to all the thorny philosophical problems that he introduced, only that I felt that I understood the questions that he raised. And I thought it was very lucidly explained in the book. I also felt that it was a real page-turner. I didn't think it was a slog at all. I guess you're either the type of person who loves that kind of thing, or you aren't. FWIW, I did have a harder time with Le Ton Beau du Marot, though.

By: empath

empath — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:09:32 -0800

This has been posted before, but here's a weird documentary featuring Hofstadter and Dennett, etc. Victim of the Brain "I met him, you know, not long ago. Hofstadter, I mean."

By: ecco

ecco — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:11:58 -0800

Thanks dmd for that quote. [Spoiler], It lets me know that I was right to stop reading after Chapter XV, (whose title is a big hint, in addition to the dialog earlier in the book), that the rest of the book is bafflegab, deoxy and all. Lovers of the book should not finish it.

By: ixohoxi

ixohoxi — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:03:34 -0800

I think I'm a pretty smart guy, and I gave up on GEB after a few chapters. It's not just that I didn't understand it (though I didn't understand much of what he was going on about); it's that he seemed to be ignoring some pretty big problems with his reasoning, implicitly assuming a lot of dubious premises, and sometimes proving obvious and inconsequential things. So I think at least part of the reason I didn't understand it was that it doesn't (always) make sense. And the narrative interludes were intrusive, precious, and didn't contribute anything to the reading experience (at least for me). I could be wrong. It's been a while and, like I said, I didn't finish it. But I catch a whiff of charlatanry in both the book and its more ardent fans. I do want to finish it, though, and really grok what he's saying, so I can do one of two things:

Learn stuff and understand why this book is allegedly so great, or
congratulate myself for being right and be able to tell the babbling fanboys exactly why they should STFU.

By: empath

empath — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:18:34 -0800

Care to elaborate on the flaws and assumptions?

By: ixohoxi

ixohoxi — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:29:16 -0800

Nope, because like I said, it was a while ago and I didn't finish it—and I don't have a copy handy. I just remember getting frustrated two or three times a page, thinking "but what about..." or "but why do you assume..." or "well, no shit". After a few chapters of that, I decided I had better things to do. Other critics in this thread, the other MeFi thread, and the Amazon reviews have put it better than I can. It sounds like the sort of book you have to read as a youngster to really get. Which isn't a knock against the book or those who like it, but I didn't read it as a youngster.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Sun, 31 May 2009 14:13:29 -0800

Well, there's a difference between reading a Brief History of Time and being an astrophysicist, to be sure. I didn't mean to say that I read GEB and figured out the solutions to all the thorny philosophical problems that he introduced, only that I felt that I understood the questions that he raised. And I thought it was very lucidly explained in the book. I also felt that it was a real page-turner. I didn't think it was a slog at all. Oh, totally! No, I wasn't trying to tell you that you didn't really get it. Just the opposite: I was trying to tell stavros & co that they'd probably gotten it as well as the rest of us!

By: fightorflight

fightorflight — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:51:52 -0800

The unsubstantive dismissals are bad enough from people who've actually read the book, like, without asking for more from people who gave up. For my part, the first few chapters of GEB were a long slog, then the rest was a pretty enjoyable breeze. The years of study of logic and philosophy that came between might well have helped here: I find sheet music hard to read unless I already have the melody; the same applied to GEB. Knowing roughly what's he's on about and where he's going enriches it immensely.

By: ixohoxi

ixohoxi — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:02:31 -0800

I intend to give it another shot (in fact, this post may have inspired me to do it soon); I don't mean to dismiss the book entirely. I am skeptical, due to my initial experience with the book (and other reasons), but I hope I'm wrong.

By: empath

empath — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:56:37 -0800

I was raised Catholic, and being a good, studious boy, I was rather serious about Catholicism, Christianity, and theology. That is, up until the age of 12 or 13 or so, when doubts started creeping in. By the time I was 18 or 19, when I read GEB, I was a firm agnostic, headed well toward atheism, and I had spent literally years agonizing over the existence of a soul, the afterlife, etc, then the nature of consciousness and identity. I mean, all it would take was watching a Star Trek holodeck episode to give me an existential crisis that would last for weeks. I had a gap in my model of the world ("What am I, really?"), that GEB fit into quite nicely. As did reading the Selfish Gene, and James Gleick's "Chaos" all at around the same time. To me, the combination of those books was close to a religious conversion experience. I'm sure it made me absolutely insufferable for a while. In any case, I think the book is a lot easier to read if you're an empty vessel, as it were. It's a foundational book, and if you already have a solid intellectual foundation to build on, you're going to spend the entire time fighting it. I think that's why young people enjoy it more, and perhaps understand it better. One can only get introduced to the concepts in the book one time. I think it's an amazing introduction, but it's not the only introduction that's available for those ideas, and it may not even be the best any more. Btw, has there really been another book like it written since then?

By: ixohoxi

ixohoxi — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:06:06 -0800

Chaos was a formative book for me, as well. I buy copies whenever I see them to give to friends. All of Gleick's stuff is good reading, really.

By: strangeguitars

strangeguitars — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:09:10 -0800

For me this book has been a companion that I like to have in the room. I could open it anytime and spend a few happy hours with it. I haven't ever read it from cover to cover. I started at the beginning initially, soon after it came out (I was in high school), but the ideas in it caused me to pause and put the book down for months at a time. This soon changed into just picking up the book and reading some random passage. I was attracted to the book in the first place because by the time I was in high school, I was already fascinated with Bach and Escher, and familiar with a lot of their work. By then I had also spent a fair amount of time fooling around with programming languages. I have, even recently, pulled it off of the shelf and read for a few hours. Within the past year, I revisited the MU puzzle. In high school I fooled around with it, but never figured it out. This time, I felt I could see what the answer was (although I couldn't write a proof for the answer) and looked it up on Wikipedia and found that I was thinking along the right lines. When I got my first real job, it involved writing macros in Excel using the Excel 4.0 macro language. In that language, you write the code in cells in a spreadsheet. Of course you can reference and change the content of spreadsheet cells with that language. Knowing this, and applying what I learned in GEB, I wrote code that rewrote itself. When I started getting interested in linguistics, I could see many of the concepts in GEB being applied, like recursion in clause structure. I also have come to understand grammar much more deeply because of Hofstadter's introduction to formal logic, and have used formal logic in designing curricula for language teaching (well, fuzzy formal logic). I see the book as a mathematical equivalent of the Chinese ancient classic Dao De Jing. There are so many parallels between the philosophical paradoxes in that book, and the mathematical paradoxes in GEB. Both books show that contradiction and paradox are integral parts of nature. I find the same contagious passion and joy in Hofstadter's writing as I do in Carl Sagan's, and the same intellectual curiosity as I find in Aldous Huxley's.

By: cj_

cj_ — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:48:14 -0800

Yeah, this is a double. I ripped these streams and converted them to AVI when the original thread was around, and was surprised to see I still have them.. I kinda want to offer them for people RealPlayer-averse, but can't really host them for a high traffic site. If someone wants to step up, memail me. According to their FAQ on IP, this is fair game as long as they are attributed and offered for non-commercial purposes. (They are 1.3G over six files at 256v/64a bitrate, total runtime is ~6 hours)

By: darth_tedious

darth_tedious — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:53:56 -0800

I remember reading Hofstadter's books as a young teen; I strongly doubt that I understood them at any greater depth than that of the copy on the book jackets, but that fact didn't bother me much... sort of like a child plinking random keys on a piano, just because they sounded nice. > In any case, I think the book is a lot easier to read if you're an empty vessel, as it were. It's a foundational book, and if you already have a solid intellectual foundation to build on, you're going to spend the entire time fighting it. I think that's why young people enjoy it more, and perhaps understand it better. Yeah, nicely put.

By: woodblock100

woodblock100 — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:32:53 -0800

understood them at any greater depth ... This is actually a hugely interesting point, with implications across many fields. For a kind of extreme example - just how much does a typical viewer/listener 'understand' of any major art work ... Beethoven's 9th, or a Picasso picture? I doubt that any of us would ever claim that we are able to 'understand' such a creation on first encounter. Nor would be probably even make such a claim after extended encounters. But we seem to feel that with a written work, we should somehow be able to come to such an 'understanding'. The book we are talking about is one that was created, and can be read, on a number of different levels. I think that it might perhaps be more relevant to approach it as one would other 'works of art', rather than as a 'book about mathematics', to be 'understood' or not.

By: rikschell

rikschell — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:52:01 -0800

I haven't read GEB yet, but remember it was written by a guy in his 20s. His 2006 book, "I am a Strange Loop" covers the same territory from the perspective of the same guy, but older. So maybe less precious now. But he's not going to be to everyone's taste. He reminds me a lot of Dave Eggers, actually. And that will either damn him or elevate him similarly.

By: skoosh

skoosh — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:15:47 -0800

I kinda want to offer them for people RealPlayer-averse, but can't really host them for a high traffic site. * Isn't this exactly the kind of problem that BitTorrent was created to solve?

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:11:48 -0800

dmd: One quite unnerving puzzle, mentioned in one of the dialogs, is a speculation concerning an author who writes a book and chooses to end the book without actually stopping the narrative, as is the usual procedure. As an author can't have a sudden ending come as a surprise when the physical fact that there are only a few pages left of the book is obvious to the reader... *cough*infinite jest*cough*

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:07:03 -0800

Hm. Their terms are the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 - meaning YouTube is probably out for us, but archive.org would work, I guess: MIT's already posting media on archive.org, & I don't know what's required for submitting media there. Torrenting would work I think - Legal Torrents is open for Creative Commons files. Er. Hm. They might request $50 for membership? In which case, you could just use the Pirate Bay because it's there. Amazon S3 can also run a tracker, but I have no idea how much traffic running a tracker takes / how much it would cost. (Also, using wget instead of, say, mplayer to get the files is much faster.)

By: crazylegs

crazylegs — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:41:40 -0800

Didn't finish Ulysses. Didn't finish Infinite Jest. Didn't even start Godel Escher Bach. Did finish Gravity's Rainbow (fourth try). Didn't finish this thread. Going to bed now.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:03:53 -0800

Hey, did this ever get shared in a less crappy format?

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:44:21 -0800

I made a podsafe version. My TPB registration is stalled pending an email. So if the thread closes first, um, look there or mefimail me?

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:44:01 -0800

All right! See Mininova.