Review of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Much pondering about thinking and writing about musing about thinking, and crafting apt analogies for analogues of analogues of physical and visual phenomena, and cracking jokes about self-reference.

It may blow your mind in such a way that it will never return to an un-blown state.
in audiobook form, it mostly works.
A bit uneven in density. But it’s nice to get some breathers amid the math discussion. A mix of logic and what not. It deals heavily with the term ‘soul’ without caring about spirituality or the contexts of religion.
More about particles than people. Good to know that a lot of scientists subscribe to ’emergence.’ but I’m not convinced, nor will I ever likely be, that all larger than life systems arise by such means.
Philosophy of caring, about others, the world, animals, the self. The self as a changing, amorphous self-defined, borderless zone of influence.
About as interesting as several VSauce videos.
I look forward to delving into his other books more seriously. Maybe revisiting this one one day. I could’ve done with more personal anecdotes. They seemed extraneous at the time, but when it shifts to the universal, I tend to respond abstractly.
Controversial talk about worth of souls. And the whole thing could’ve been organized and presented more succinctly with unnecessary wordplay and semantic quirks. The free-flowing style lightens the whole tone.
Nonetheless it will leave a lingering impression, with some core tenets that remain unforgettable.