/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.12212915]

What's the deal with this book, /sci/?

[Anonymous No.12212923]

>>12212915
It's kinda average. Not very good, not very bad. A lot of pseuds think it's amazing.

[Anonymous No.12212961]

>>12212915
Its central theme is emergence by being able to self-reference. Author is a neuroscientist and thinks about consciousness a lot. I like the book very much, it is a very smart book. If you want to learn compsci or math, I would look elsewhere for more depth.

[Anonymous No.12212971]

>try to read this book
>""""whimsical Carrolian dialogues"""
>mfw

I've dropped it twice, I think both times it was some chapter on symbolic logic or formal systems that was a huge difficulty spike, reading this book is hard work for multiple reasons.

[Anonymous No.12212983]

>>12212971
Carroll was based tho
Both as a writer and a person

[Anonymous No.12212992]

>>12212915
It's like catcher in the rye for undergrads.
You gotta read it during your undergrad otherwise you won't identify with it.

[Anonymous No.12212997]

>>12212983

That may be so, but imitating his style has no place in this book, it was just tedious.

[Anonymous No.12213003]

>>12212992
I'm just gonna get a B.A. in business tho, anon.

[Anonymous No.12213012]

>>12212915
Started reading it a while ago and haven't finished yet. Don't know if I will.

This book doesn't know what it's trying to be.
The author claims the central thesis of the book is to explain his theory about how what he calls "strange loops" (his pretentious term for self-referential structures) somehow give rise to consciousness. In this sense, the book is really a work in the cognitive science genre.
However, he spends a ridiculous amount of time on totally tangential subjects. He's all over the place.
This book is good if you want a broad introduction to a whole lot of trivia in the fields of music (mostly Bach), Godelian incompleteness (dumbed down), logic (some interesting stuff), mathematics, computer science (what you'd learn in a CS1 course), and Escher (what you learned in middle school art class).
He wrote it when he was a PhD student at Oregon doing Physics, and it shows. He comes across as a dilettante, a jack of all trades but master of none. That's the kind of knowledge I think you'll leave with. That said, it's a very well written, creative book, and a thoroughly interesting read.

I think it attracts a lot of pseuds because it looks complex, drops a lot of fancy terms, but doesn't require the expenditure of much energy to understand.

If you want a good book on Godel, read Godel's Proof. If you want a good book on consciousness, read some philosophy. Not just modern assholes like Dennett and Searle, but heavy-hitters like Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, etc. If you want a good book on Bach, read "Music In the Castle of Heaven" by John Elliot Gardiner. If you want to know about Escher, go to a museum and stare at his drawings, maybe read a wikipedia article on the guy.

[Anonymous No.12213016]

>>12213012
Oh, and if you want a good logic text, try Richard Arthur "An Introduction to Logic"

[Anonymous No.12213190]

>>12213012
>heavy-hitters like Aristotle, Aquinas,
based
>Kant
cringe bro ngl

[Anonymous No.12213192]

>>12213012
>Started reading it a while ago and haven't finished yet. Don't know if I will.
Same. I feel like it's incredibly well written, but the actual information in the book is somewhat lacking

[Anonymous No.12213203]

>>12213192
Yeah this was my gripe with it too. But I tend not to read a lot of pop-sci anyway.

[Anonymous No.12213218]

>>12213012
>Started reading it a while ago and haven't finished yet. Don't know if I will.
>That said, it's a very well written, creative book, and a thoroughly interesting read.
lol

[Anonymous No.12213299]

>>12213203
Is it pop sci? I've read books explicitly advertised as pop sci and it's literally stuff from elementary school

[Anonymous No.12213323]

>>12213299
Anything that isn't a textbook is more or less pop-sci, it's just an overview of some fields presented in a literary style.

[Anonymous No.12213419]

Okay I have my own bias here. I actually like this book a lot. When I read it in middle school it is what really got me into mathematics and science, I don't know what really appealed to me. Maybe it was the whimsical dialogue, maybe it was the strange but creative scenarios. It is something about this book, the brilliant writing of it, the witty tone and that one chapter on rice snack. I sure as hell did not understand the algorithms and some of the maths it tried to present (surprisingly I understood portions of them, I remember working through that m number problem myself).

So yeah, in my opinion, a great great book. Very well written, information might be lacking but if you are in for a bizarre ride to the steam pot blimp then this is the book you are looking for.

[Anonymous No.12213445]

>>12212915
I mostly agree with >>12212961 >>12213012
It's honestly a pretty disappointing book. I was hoping it wouldn't be so pop science and would drop the pretentious language but it doesn't, so I have to say I don't like the writing style. The central idea behind it is pretty schizo and honestly reminds me of silly new age pantheist bullshit. It tries to establish a link between consciousness and self-reference in structures but doesn't actually lay out any logical arguments for why that is the case and prefers to explore how self-referential structures appear in different areas, and to draw connections between these areas which ultimately have nothing to do with each other, therefore consciousness (what I'm referring to when I say "schizo reasoning"). If you are coming into this wanting real knowledge of Gödel's work and self-referential structures that isn't filled with schizo reasoning and pretentious language, I agree with >>12213012, just read Gödel.

[Anonymous No.12213447]

I have had to start over 2 times because I went too long between two reading sessions and I forgot which system was MIU and which was something else and that made it hard to follow later chapters when only reference was made to earlier chapters rather than recaps.

[Anonymous No.12213451]

>>12213445
although I guess the irony in my last statement is that Gödel was a schizo lul

[Anonymous No.12213652]

>>12213299
i wouldn't consider it science or pop science, its just a collection of connections and ideas which the author felt were interesting enough to write down

[Anonymous No.12214262]

>>12213012
>>12213016
>>12213445
Deduction by Daniel Bonevac and Introduction to Mathematical Logic by Elliot Mendelson are also good books on logic (especially that latter since it covers Godel's Theorem along with the theory of computation and other more complex topics related to logic).