4 replies to this topic

[chubtoad]

Godel,Escher,Bach an Eternal Golden Braid
Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
730 pages (Long but written in a way that anybody could understand it.)
The book talks in great detail about many of the concepts on this site. One thing it does a very good job of is explaining how something as complex as the mind can come from a bunch of neurons. It also has many chapters on AI and gives you a good lesson on basic number theory and formal systems. At the end of each chapter there is a fiction portion which gives you a good example of the ideas being discussed. When buying books I suggest using ebay or amazon.com. I got my copy of GEB for $8 on amazon.

[th3hegem0n]

read this book, or you might as well just kill yourself and get your meaningless life over with.

[chubtoad]

I just got my copy of Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas in the mail today from amazon. Funny it was on the same day you commented on my 2 year old post. I have also been reading Sipser's Introduction to Theory of Computation, which is a math book which goes into detail on many of the ideas. Anyway, definitely read GEB it gives an extremely intuitive perspective on many important ideas in computation.

[John Schloendorn]

If there is any must-read for wannabe immortals, this would be it!

[caliban]

So many ringing endorsememnts and nobody sets an ImmInst affiliate link. [sfty]

Click here to buy: