HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Loading...

I Am a Strange Loop (original 2007; edition 2007)

by Douglas R. Hofstadter

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
2,526445,814 (3.62)23
Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach--an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. What do we mean when we say "I"? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? This book argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. Deep down, a human brain is a chaotic soup of particles, on a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call "symbols." The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one we both call "I." But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real--or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction?--From publisher description.… (more)
Member:leonardr
Title:I Am a Strange Loop
Authors:Douglas R. Hofstadter
Info:Basic Books (2007), Hardcover, 436 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:***1/2
Tags:read

Work Information

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (2007)

Recently added bypath_variant, davidrgrigg, private library, mcountr, AriaMK, amialive, DanKillian, r2v2
None
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 23 mentions

English (40)  Italian (2)  Danish (1)  French (1)  All languages (44)
Showing 1-5 of 40 (next | show all)
I don't need to go into why this book is bad as plenty of other readers have done so marvellously. Link, link, link and link. But if you do end up reading it, treat it not like a book, rather a long monologue turning into background buzz that might trigger you to some of your own ideas. ( )
  adze117 | Sep 24, 2023 |
This book was one of my favorites many years ago, and I wanted to reread it from my very different perspective a few decades later. It is kind of a "little sister" to Hofstadter's more famous "Gödel, Escher, Bach", which I definitely plan on reading but have never gotten through previously. At first I was somewhat frustrated by the pace of this book. It seemed to spend far too little time on actual ideas and overdid it with analogies. I felt it was too verbose and repetitive and seemed to contain a lot of "filler". My conclusion was that it would benefit from an editor, as the tidbits of new (to me) ideas were overwhelmed by explanation. I wondered who his audience was intended to be, the tone seemed to fluctuate, sometimes aimed at those with no math or science background whatsoever, and sometimes appealing to the more "logical" among us. However, when I got to his chapter on his wife's passing, my opinion changed. I noticed that another reviewer on this site found that this part negated part or all of his theory of consciousness because it introduced bias. However I was deeply moved by it and it brought me to tears at one point. In my mind his "theory of consciousness" has at its heart a "theory of empathy" which resonates with me deeply. I believe that empathy is a key part of consciousness, and Hofstadter's theory resolves some of the issues I had squaring this view with a scientific viewpoint. A distributed "I" is more intuitive to me than an isolated one, and I found his explanation of thought and understanding being a manipulation of symbols regardless of substrate to be compelling.

I also softened on my views on the earlier part of the book. His over-explanation was not filler, but his insistence on making sure his ideas were truly and deeply understood by the reader, as they were crucial to not only the rest of the theory, but to him personally. I also over-explain sometimes and unfortunately have seen eyes glaze over as I go into more and more detail. "Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood." After this part, the pace and the balance was a bit more palatable to me and new ideas came more frequently with explanations and analogies that were not so painful. As I reached its conclusion, not only did I feel that I deeply understood his view of consciousness, but I agreed. That was his goal after all. It also occurred to me that the audience was possibly his wife, or rather the echo of her consciousness that continued in himself.

I am subtracting half a star because of one opinion of his that I find distasteful, the idea that there is a spectrum of the "size" of souls (using his reinterpretation of the word soul that rejects dualism). I think this is a slippery slope to racism, even though that may not have been his intention. Also, his views on musical taste at the end were pretty gatekeep-y, and while I get what he was going for, I've tried to eliminate these kind of thoughts in myself because such things are so subjective. OK, some people don't "get" Bach the way you do, but maybe their understanding of Kendrick Lamar's lyrics are on a level you will never quite grok. Side note: as a computer science-y person my brain kept returning to machine learning and AI, which is touched upon abstractly but not directly. My question is, what happens when GPT-3 (or another large language model) "perceives" itself? There has to be some kind of feedback loop and recursion going on; is the result similar to the strange loop he describes? This book definitely whet my appetite for Gödel, Escher, Bach, and I can't wait to read that one and contrast it to this one. ( )
  sisyphus_happy | Feb 14, 2023 |
Not as dense or rich as [b:Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid|24113|Gödel, Escher, Bach An Eternal Golden Braid|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1314739489s/24113.jpg|850076] and more focused on the "scientific" side of things without all the wonderful digressions (you have to read GEB to understand). Still Hofstadter plays enough mind games to make the going entertaining and challenging.
Basically an argument for the nature of consciousness that all but proves Descartes' proposition. But Hofstadter presents a pretty convincing argument for his theories on why I think I am I.

The one place where he goes out on thin ice is the persistence of "selves" after death via the symbols in other peoples' minds. It seems a bit of wishful thinking on Hofstadter's part as he ruminates on his wife's sudden death. Since he doesn't believe in a persistent "soul" he yearns for some sort of lifelike afterimage of the departed. It doesn't hold water.

My sorry little review gives no idea of the depth or richness of this book. Suffice it to say that I think Hofstadter is on to the nature of consciousness and he presents it in a lively yet challenging way.

Anyway, I am a self-referent loop that talks about itself. You gotta read it. ( )
  Gumbywan | Jun 24, 2022 |
This is Pop, painless to read but mostly nonsense. Hofstadter tells a fairy tale about how minds are made, and I cannot recall a single claim from the text that is testable. The work is unserious. Science is bold and serious philosophers would like to pick a fight with your beliefs. This book challenges the reader to a pillow fight. ( )
  JamesBeach | Sep 15, 2021 |
I liked the idea of distributed consciousness. It reminds me of the idea of electron's position being a probability cloud where even though there's a small area where it's likely to be technically the probability is stretched out thinly to everywhere. Even though we are mostly in our brain there we are thinly stretched out to everything and everyone we have interacted with. ( )
  Paul_S | Dec 23, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 40 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review

Belongs to Publisher Series

Metatemas (100)
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
To my sister Laura,
who can understand,
and to our sister Molly,
who cannot.
First words
PLATO: But what then do you mean by "life", Socrates?
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (3)

Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach--an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. What do we mean when we say "I"? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? This book argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. Deep down, a human brain is a chaotic soup of particles, on a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call "symbols." The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one we both call "I." But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real--or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction?--From publisher description.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Nel 1979, un giovane esperto di intelligenza artificiale sorprese il mondo con un libro di enorme mole, labirintico, geniale e di immenso successo. Il libro era "Gödel, Escher e Bach" e il suo autore Douglas Hofstadter. Attraverso logica matematica, musica, paradossi grafici e linguistici, Hofstadter cercava di dare sostanza a un'intuizione che sembrava scandalosa: la mente umana potrebbe non essere altro che un computer, i neuroni dei semplici chip, l'intelligenza mera capacità di eseguire i programmi scritti nel cervello. A quasi trent'anni di distanza, molte cose sono cambiate: i computer non occupano più gli scantinati delle università ma sono in tutte le case e in tutte le tasche, e gli studi sul cervello hanno raggiunto un grado di raffinatezza quasi inimmaginabile. Eppure, resta intatto l'ultimo mistero: dove si trova e come è fatta l'anima? Cos'è che chiamiamo "io" quando parliamo con noi stessi? Cosa resta di noi (se resta qualcosa) dopo la nostra morte fisica? Nel libro di Hofstadter troviamo tutta la sua abilità di divulgatore, capace di spaziare dalla letteratura all'informatica, dai giochi di parole ai dibattiti più attuali della filosofia, dagli esempi più curiosi agli esperimenti mentali più originali e vividi.
(piopas)
Haiku summary
I am so meta.
More meta than you, beeyotch!
Just like this haiku.

(Carnophile)

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.62)
0.5 2
1 13
1.5 2
2 36
2.5 4
3 75
3.5 21
4 114
4.5 12
5 75

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,230,955 books! | Top bar: Always visible