I Am a Strange Loop

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English language

Published Aug. 1, 2007

ISBN:
978-0-465-03078-1
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4 stars (3 reviews)

I Am a Strange Loop is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a strange loop to explain the sense of "I". The concept of a strange loop was originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference. Hofstadter had previously expressed disappointment with how Gödel, Escher, Bach, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for general nonfiction, was received. In the preface to its 20th anniversary edition, Hofstadter laments that the book was perceived as a hodgepodge of neat things with no central theme. He states: "GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"Hofstadter …

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reviewed I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Review of 'I Am a Strange Loop' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The author's key strength is his ability to effectively explain complex topics in layman's terms using analogies. That helps a lot in this book, considering its complex topic - Consciousness. I found myself almost always agreeing with the author's idea about the existence/non-existence of the 'self'. Since I am not well-read on this topic, I will reserve from commenting too much on the topic of the 'self'. Instead, I will say that the author does a decent job of presenting the arguments objectively. And this is quite hard to achieve for a complex philosophical topic while keeping the text light and understandable.
The only minor complaint I have was that towards the end there are some sections - talking about musical tastes and their relation to the idea of self - that I found a bit out of place. I would not hold this against the author as the rest …

reviewed I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Review of 'I Am a Strange Loop' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This is merely a re-hash of Hofstadter's justly famous Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, with some ideas from Le Ton Beau de Marot thrown in but most of the fun stuff taken out; if you've read those, you don't need to read this. If you've only read GEB, then read this instead of Le Ton Beau de Marot unless you have a particular interest in the art/skill of translation.

This isn't a bad book, apart from the constant use of reference to the "dear reader", it's just redundant because of the above and not nearly as much fun as GEB.

Here's what it's about: minds - specifically what they are/where they come from. Hofstadter's thesis is very plausible to me, despite my disagreeing with some specific things he says. It seems like it might be scientifically testable, too. My beef with Hofstadter is that his research does not …

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4 stars