Gödel, Escher, Bullshit

I rant about this frequently. I can’t seem to help it.

Every time I see science books mentioned, I see praise for Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Why? I just can’t understand it.

The book is littered with second-rate ideas told in third-rate prose. And it’s like a billion pages and it could’ve been 200 or less. But Barbara from Goodreads said it best.

This book told me something about intelligence – the smartest thing to do is to avoid this book’s overly lengthy babblings of a self-important graduate student who is way too impressed with himself. It took this guy over 700 pages to illustrate by analogy his not-particularly novel theory….

Good on you, Barbara. You summed up Hofstadter’s picayune claptrap very well.

If you like, I can recommend a lot better books than GEB that don’t condescend to the reader, are based in more solid science, and aren’t so goddamn annoying.

Only read GEB if you have a whole lot of time to waste or it’s the only book within 500 miles.

Otherwise, tear the pages out and do something useful with them. They can make good kindling or can line a bird cage, or even soak up minor spills.