OMFG

Dear Piyush Ahuja,

    Thanks for your very nice note.  I'm touched that GEB's preface (I presume you mean the 20th-anniversary preface?) has resonated with you so much.  Of course you'll have to see if the intensity of that resonance persists as you continue reading the book.

    You said that you've read a lot of philosophy but have never come across anything related to strange loops, paradoxes, and logic. Well, there is a huge amount of discussion among philosophers concerning paradoxes and logic, so I guess you just haven't been reading the right philosophers.  I myself find their ways of writing, however, to be nearly universally opaque, so I haven't been much enlightened by them.  I am much more down-to-earth than most philosophers, perhaps because my early training was in math and physics, or else perhaps because I just am fundamentally a very concrete-minded, example-driven person, and am incapable of being extremely abstract.  Whatever the reason is, my thinking style and writing style are pretty straightforward relative to those of most philosophers.

    I would recommend that you get a hold of my much later (2007) book, "I Am a Strange Loop", because it covers the same main territory as GEB does, but in a very different fashion, and I suspect that reading the two books would give a far clearer picture than reading just one of them.  I'm not sure which order I'd recommend.  I think IASL is a bit easier and more straightforward than GEB is, but perhaps GEB is more engaging.  Take your pick (if you choose to follow this suggestion).

    That's it for now, and I wish you many stimulating thoughts in reading GEB.

                                                 Sincerely,

                                                 Douglas Hofstadter.