RtS: I am a Strange Loop - Hofstadter

[Ghoulish Delight]

Hmm, didn't include books in the RtS categories, did we. Well, impromptu RtS it is...

Title: I am a Strange Loop
Author: Douglas Hofstadter
Rank: 3.5/5

The Skinny: Entertaining if you're a fan of Hofstadter's ideas and mastery of analogy, but ultimately he does a disservice to himself with some overreaching conclusions and scattered arguments.

The Lowdown: I've been obsessed with Douglas Hofstadter's ideas on the mind, thought, consciousness, AI, etc. ever since I slogged my way through his debut masterpiece, Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Whether you end up agreeing with him or not, he is a nearly unmatched master of analogy, which makes for great reading, which is quite a feat for someone who spends an awful lot of pages hashing out number theory.

I could never summarize his works adequately, but more or less what Hofstadter attempts to impress with all of his writing is that thought and consciousness is the inevitable result of any highly complex symbolic system that has the ability to perceive and represent aspects of itself in sufficiently high resolution.

He prefaces his latest effort, I am a Strange Loop, by essentially saying, "I know I'm covering a lot of old ground with this, but I'm writing about it all again because y'all missed the damn point of GEB." Unfortunately, in my opinion, he added precious little to what's already in GEB, and what he did add comes across as a lot of speculation and grasping for meaning where little exists.

If you've never read any Hofstadter, and the philosophy of the mind interests you, I would steer you well away form this book. If you've read Hofstadter and aren't particularly excited about what you've read, this book isn't going to change your mind. If you, like me, devour every clever analogy and multi-leveled play on words that he comes up with, by all means read this book. Just don't expect much in terms of new insight, and be prepared to roll your eyes at some of his grasping.