Godel, Escher, Bach

I nominate GEB, the second most owned book in this group (first unweighted) as the official book for INTPs anywhere. If the hallmark of INTP-dom is finding patterns then this book does that in spades. Any seconds?

Haven't read it. What's it on?

"a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity"

I have it, but somehow it keeps filtering down on my to-be-read list because it's like 800 pages long and not conducive to dragging along on the subway!

 

Well, as an INTP, I'd like to pick a fight. Just because a book is classically INTP doesn't mean one should nominate it if it's bad or ugly.

Hofstadter does horrific violence to Bach. It is like watching his invented alphabets - a sort of Turing machine taking something which is historically and culturally contingent, ripping it up into shreds and spitting it out as tape, destroying anything that was beautiful about it in the first place.

At heart, Bach is not about math. The well tempered clavier is not about math. Math is instrumental to Bach; a demonstration through beauty of the integration of nature into knowledge. Hofstadter doesn't have a conception of knowledge, nature, history, culture or beauty, since he only deals with information. So he wrecks Bach.

I would oppose nominating an author who so completely subordinates everything in existence to his conception of the functional. That is not what being an INTP is supposed to be about.

Please, I've been trying to figure out who I am for sixty years. Tell me, what is being an INTP about?

Hi, I just joined this group and for the record, I also have GEB.

I only got about two-thirds through GEB:EGB before the math got too difficult for me and I had to give up.

I wouldn't say I'd read it: I just kind of wallowed around in it for a while at (high) school.