<story><title>Gödel, Escher, Bach: an in-depth explainer</title><url>https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/wwNnzaPnB5a48K86N/book-review-goedel-escher-bach-an-in-depth-explainer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dinobones</author><text>Am I the only one who did not find this book that interesting? I studied CS so it just felt like reading my class textbooks again, except with random trippy stories in between that try to shoehorn theory into a poor metaphor.&lt;p&gt;The fundamentals of CS (strings, automata, graphs) are elementary building blocks. This is by design. You can apply them to almost anything. Almost everything &amp;quot;is a graph&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;recursion&amp;quot; if you formulate them to be so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>climate-code</author><text>The point isn&amp;#x27;t that everything is recursive - the point is that systems that are recursive &amp;#x2F; self-referential cause breakdowns in logic (they are incomplete).&lt;p&gt;This is a deep philosophical insight - it rhymes with the Buddhist idea of no-self - the problems that arise because we hold onto a false sense of self.</text></comment>
<story><title>Gödel, Escher, Bach: an in-depth explainer</title><url>https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/wwNnzaPnB5a48K86N/book-review-goedel-escher-bach-an-in-depth-explainer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dinobones</author><text>Am I the only one who did not find this book that interesting? I studied CS so it just felt like reading my class textbooks again, except with random trippy stories in between that try to shoehorn theory into a poor metaphor.&lt;p&gt;The fundamentals of CS (strings, automata, graphs) are elementary building blocks. This is by design. You can apply them to almost anything. Almost everything &amp;quot;is a graph&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;recursion&amp;quot; if you formulate them to be so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xiaolingxiao</author><text>I read it before studying cs and I thought it was fascinating and made me want to study it. After studying it at the grad school level I re read it and found the book somewhat pedantic. It’s a bit like the black swan in the regard: it package advanced under grad level stem topics with colorful anecdotes and musings.</text></comment>