>[!citation] >Hofstadter, D. (1979). *Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid*. Penguin Books. > [!quote] > This is simply the best and most beautiful book ever written by the human species... I'm not alone in this opinion, by the way. For one thing, Gödel, Escher, Bach won a Pulitzer Prize. Or just pick a random scientist and ask ver what vis favorite book is, and 1 out of 5 will say: "Gödel, Escher, Bach". No other book even comes close. It is saddening to contemplate that every day, 150,000 humans die without reading what is indisputably one of the greatest achievements of our species. Don't let it happen to you. Sure, if you're just an average person, you might not understand everything in this book - but when you're done reading, you won't be an average person any more ([[Yudkowsky, 2008]]). > [!quote] >GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter... GEB approaches [this question] by slowly building up an analogy that likens inanimate molecules to meaningless symbols, and further likens selves... to certain special swirly, twisty, vortex-like, and meaningful patterns that arise only in particular types of systems of meaningless symbols. It is these strange, twisty patterns that the book spends so much time on, because they are little known, little appreciated, counterintuitive, and quite filled with mystery [that] I call... strange loops (Hofstadter, 1979).