What sort of thing do you want to hear? The problem is that different people get different insights out of GEB; this fact does not invalidate those insights.
At one level, all the book says is that intelligence is possible. At another, it discusses some of the parallels in music, art and mathematics. At another, it's about brains; it's also about number theory, Zen, and the genetic code; it's about self-reference and analogy, and it's even a parody of (or homage to) Lewis Carroll.
The parable of the five blind men and the elephant doesn't disprove the existence of elephants.
Oh, wow. Reading "Godel, Escher, Bach" was an almost religious experience for me. Yes, it took a while to get through it, but that book made me start classifying myself as a wanna-be cognitive scientist.
Very seldom in one's life do such experiences occur.
"Metamagical Themas" is also a good read, and more general (lacking GEB's linking themes of self-reference and cognition). "Le Ton Beau de Marot" has a lot of interesting things to say about machine translation, but Hofstadter also says some rather silly things about linguistics.
If you're even slightly interested in cognition or AI, you should go out and read GEB if you haven't already.
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What sort of thing do you want to hear? The problem is that different people get different insights out of GEB; this fact does not invalidate those insights.
At one level, all the book says is that intelligence is possible. At another, it discusses some of the parallels in music, art and mathematics. At another, it's about brains; it's also about number theory, Zen, and the genetic code; it's about self-reference and analogy, and it's even a parody of (or homage to) Lewis Carroll.
The parable of the five blind men and the elephant doesn't disprove the existence of elephants.
Oh, wow. Reading "Godel, Escher, Bach" was an almost religious experience for me. Yes, it took a while to get through it, but that book made me start classifying myself as a wanna-be cognitive scientist.
Very seldom in one's life do such experiences occur.
"Metamagical Themas" is also a good read, and more general (lacking GEB's linking themes of self-reference and cognition). "Le Ton Beau de Marot" has a lot of interesting things to say about machine translation, but Hofstadter also says some rather silly things about linguistics.
If you're even slightly interested in cognition or AI, you should go out and read GEB if you haven't already.