Awesome books!

[Kirl]

I'm currently reading "Godel, Escher, Bach", it's old (1980) but it's one of the most awesome books I've ever read. It's basically about the nature of intelligence.

Along the way it covers topics ranging from Zen and strange loops to particle physics, molecular biology and AI. All that is explained with the brilliant works of Gödel, Escher and Bach. It's age doesn't matter at all as it´s really about the awesome insights gained during the search for intelligence.

The playful writing style is heavily inspired by Lewis Caroll. Every chapter explains key points through a dialog between achilles and the tortoise. It's really easy to read, even though many subjects themselves are truly mind boggling.

I highly recommend everybody here to give this book a try, I picked up a 2nd hand copy for less then $5!

Love to hear what books you like as well. Anything from science to fiction to picture books is welcome!

[combatking0]

Is there an ISBN printed on the back? That sounds like an interesting book.

[Kirl]

The ISBN nr is: 0-394-74502-7.
Here is a link to it on Amazon, there are some good user reviews there. In my post above I linked to the new reprint.

I'm currently about half-way through, and it's trying to explain how intelligence can emerge from dumb processes like bio-chemical reactions (in our bodies). And how ant-hills can make intelligent choices even though they're made up of dumb individual ants without any hierarchical leadership. The book makes the comparison to the dumb bits of computers, and why there is good hope for developing a true AI one day.

I'm kind of waxing on about it, but I just can't put into words the awesomeness of this book. I gained an entirely renewed respect for the works of G,E & B as they did so many things I never knew about. Here is a cool youtube movie which visually explains Bach's palindromic crab canon.

Believe it or not but the intro dialog between the tortoise and achilles for this chapter is written as a palindrome itself, which means you can read it both ways (front to back and back to front). A property which most DNA sequences share.

Really the author of this book is as brilliant as any of the three historic figures he writes about.
[/rant]

I can honestly rave on for hours, but I'll just stop myself here. In short, GET THIS BOOK! 

[combatking0]

Excellent - I've found myself increasingly using Amazon. I should have looked at the first link, but thank you for clarifying the details.

I'll let you know what I think of it when it arrives, but it sounds brilliant.

[Kirl]

Cool, I'd love to hear what you think of it!

It's not a quick read though. Not because it's hard to read but because thinking about the topics themselves will leave you intellectually exhausted. I found this book quite some time ago and every now and then I read a chapter and forget about it for a while.

It's the kind of book that makes me want to live forever, if only to gather a greater understanding of life, the universe and everything.

[Moroboshisan]

[...]if only to gather a greater understanding of life, the universe and everything.

...the answer is 42!

[Kirl]

Yes, but what's the question?

Let's hope Earth 2.0 will do better. 

[Shockwave]

It's the kind of book that makes me want to live forever, if only to gather a greater understanding of life, the universe and everything.

What an endorsement K+

The only real time I've felt like that about a book was the series of books called The Dark Tower.. They are Sci-Fi and Because Stephen King (don't let that put you off!) was so slow writing them I honestly thought that he wouldn't live long enough to finish the series. I hoped for a long time that he would get his ass into gear and finish them because I had been reading the books since I was a teenager and I really wanted to see how the story ended.

Now that I read the last instalment I feel sad that the anticipation is over, even though there is another Dark Tower book to be released next year, the story now has an end and I am not as excited about the new one any more.

[benny!]

Sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing the link. Will consider to buy it...

[rain_storm]

Kurt Gödel, the man who coined the phrase "Infinity is Not A Number" (it's not equal in value to any number on the number line and since by definition the number line contains all numbers... you get where this is going)

The same man that proved the incompleteness of mathematics using naught but boolean logic. My hero.

[Kirl]

I searched the web for Dark Tower (I used the Google ) and found a whole bunch of beautiful artwork, the story seems interesting as well, thanks for mentioning it!

I will add it to my list of books to check out.

Would love to hear more suggestions, one can never have enough reading material for those rainy Sunday's...

[rdc]

The Dark Tower series is actually some of King's best work. It is a very strange story, so you really have to stick with it.

Since he has gotten into this "literary" kick, his books have been crap, IMO. His early work is much better than most of the stuff he has done lately.

[Shockwave]

I searched the web for Dark Tower (I used the Google ) and found a whole bunch of beautiful artwork, the story seems interesting as well, thanks for mentioning it!

I will add it to my list of books to check out.

The first book is a bit wierd, but once you're got halfway into the second one you'll probably be hooked!