Podcasts of February 2017

In February I listened to:

Jim Epstein on Bitcoin, the Blockchain, and Freedom in Latin America
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/jim_epstein_on.html
Probably one of my favorite econtalk podcasts so far. Talks about how bitcoin is popular in Venezuela because of lack of access to food (strict government controls), so instead of waiting in line for hours for essentials Venezuelans have turned to bitcoin mining to get revenue. Mining bitcoin generally is cost prohibitive, since the electricity to do is very expensive, but electricity in Venezuela is largely subsidized by the government so it is one of the countries where it economically makes sense to mine bitcoin. The bitcoins can be transferred to USD or coupons at a lot of popular exchanges. This kind of activity is also seen where there are big tariffs (e.g. Mexico with a ~60% tariff on buying iPhones).

Also interesting is the idea of blockchains, the tech behind bitcoin. Essentially a shared database where people can access records. Has uses in housing (keeping records of buys & sales & ownership). Really interesting thing to think about even in the US where government plays a big role in ensuring sales are legitimate (e.g. can't accidentally sell the driveway I share with my neighbor). Highly recommend this podcast, I enjoyed & understood almost all of it (the former comes often, the latter comes rarely).

George Borjas on Immigration and We Wanted Workers
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/george_borjas_o.html
Also a really interesting one. Some main ideas include the comparison between immigration and trade. If we think of immigration as low skill workers threatening the jobs of some then trade will be largely the same, except immigrants are people & not widgets (paraphrased from Borjas) so there are some complicated differences. Brings up the great point that in immigration we often don't discuss the makeup of people, and what types of immigrants are coming into America and what types of jobs / workers they threaten.

Michael Munger on the Basic Income Guarantee
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/michael_munger_3.html
I would love for someone to listen to this and explain it to me better. It was a really interesting intense debate about BIG (Basic Income Guarantee), essentially a basic income that is guaranteed to everyone (say, 15k for everyone a year). There are lots of arguments presented, but one of them (at least as far as I understood) was that we are already providing some kind of BIG via lots of government programs, and instead we should scrap them (save the overhead, save the trouble) and consolidate them into a BIG. Stuff like "cliff effect" where people will avoid working to lose basic guarantees are considered, and Russ suggests something like a progressive BIG. 

Dr. Munger makes a really interesting claim at the end- that the BIG will not go up, but will rather go down as we become more efficient. As our technology improves things will fall in price, and while wages will fall, prices will fall even harder & faster- so the BIG will go down not up. Similar argument to what Elon Musk made (about automation making BIG a necessity).

Michael O'Hare on Art Museums
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/05/michael_ohare_o.html
Er, I've said so far I liked all of them. I guess it's because the ones I didn't like (Grit with Angela Ducksworth, Ego is the Enemy) I just didn't finish. But this one was also good, and it's a subject personally interesting to me. Michael O'Hare talks about how art museums currently don't well serve their audience, and they generally don't act towards what he thinks their goal should be: "The purpose of an art museum is more, better engagement with art." To this end, he discusses admission prices, museum layout (including getting more chairs), and the surprising amount of assets museums have.

Museums, big museums like the ones we have in NY, often only display single digit percentages of their assets (he cites 4~5%), most of which sits unviewed in a basement. Michael argues that we can take these art pieces and sell them, either to other museums or to private collectors. This would a) easily, easily take care of admission prices and b) allow new museums to come into existence. By allowing these assets to flow more freely the museum can generate revenue to better serve the public, but this is currently not allowed because amongst directors there is a rule to never sell art (except to acquire more art). I'm not sure how factual all these numbers are but I found the idea very interesting.

This was also the first econtalk podcast I listened to!

Cathy O'Neil on Weapons of Math Destruction
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/10/cathy_oneil_on_1.html

The subject of this podcast is actually an answer I gave in a Palantir interview about problems in tech. I gave it really poorly and I didn't articulate it well, but Cathy brings up much better examples in a much more coherent way. She discusses Weapons of Math Destruction, algorithms that are secret, have big impact, and are destructive. Examples include recidivism rates, teacher ratings, college rankings, and advertising, and how these algorithms are destructive in very non transparent ways.

More than Terminator-esque sentient AI, I think this is the bigger concern with AI and ML and all these new algorithms. The developer isn't perfect and we should be careful of oracles.

Jonathan Skinner on Health Care Costs, Technology, and Rising Mortality
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/07/jonathan_skinne.html
Health care is one of my favorite subjects so far, mostly because I have so little knowledge about it. Jonathan Skinner addresses how innovation is not always good in health care, and how there are many inefficiencies produced even with better technology. For example, a technology may be found to be effective for a small controlled group, but then is spread and used across the country in hospitals with much less certain effectiveness and much greater cost. An alternative is mentioned in British health care system where certain services are not provided by the government due to cost, but that sometimes results in lives lost and sicker people. Primary takeaway for me is that US health care is definitely innovative, but perhaps the innovation is not necessarily worth its cost.

In the last few minutes, he brings up a really interesting idea: a central institution that processes all insurance claims, reducing administrative costs, and providing central data for regional variations and where spending is going (and how effective it will be).

Richard Epstein on Cruises, First Class Travel, and Inequality
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/06/richard_epstein_3.html
This was a confusing one. I didn't follow all the arguments or agree with all of them, but I wasn't sure if the latter was mostly due to the former. The podcast opens with a discussion of consumption inequality (e.g. first class seats) and how that benefits us all (the extra money is used in a way that helps us all, e.g. bigger planes, tvs, ambient lighting, all the new 777 stuff). They then move onto a general discussion about inequality, and this is where I kind of disagree. Russ & Richard make the point that a lot of billionaires are also philanthropists, and even though many people dislike the idea of billionaires having so much control, the money and aid they contribute is better than the government stepping in. Basically voluntary redistribution is much better than (i.e. more effective, efficient) a forced government transfer program.

They also discuss tax and regulation, and Richard makes the argument that they both produce incentive effects, such as curbing innovation. We are much better off by punishing those who cross the line than by intensely regulating them and affecting their growth.

I guess my problem with that argument is I mistrust some of these people in power and (maybe foolishly) think the government would better serve the people's needs.

Doug Lemov on Reading
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/11/doug_lemov_on_r.html
This one was quite good, if not that insightful (for me personally). Doug discusses the importance of reading, and the importance of close reading. It's important for our education to emphasize reading difficult texts closely, and have the attention & grit & capability to get through difficult but rewarding texts. In particular, reading any book is not the same as reading difficult books, and one way we can incentivize reading is by teaching it in such a way that we combine difficulty with rewards.

I think one of the more valuable skills I got out of 4 years here at Columbia is how to skim texts, how to closely read texts, and how to read texts to distill the core arguments. 

Doug also makes a great case for reading books out loud. Made me think about how wealthy families tend to be more able to read out loud and provide resources for their kids.

John Cochrane on Economic Growth and Changing the Policy Debate
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/09/john_cochrane_o.html
John was very interesting to listen to and had a good conversation with Russ. The takeaways I had from this podcast were: America is stagnating in economic growth, and that measure is one of the most important. Other issues we debate are often subsidiaries of that one problem. Innovation & growth is stagnated by taxes & regulation, and by removing these barriers we will have a better standard of living. 

There's currently a ton of inefficiency in how we operate (complicated tax codes, complicated loopholes, complicated laws) which in large part is due to a regulatory nightmare. This gets into an interesting discussion about policy debate, and how we can change the conversation to actually reform the system. We need, essentially, a leader/party/politician that can form this coalition and put together a "grand bargain."

I also found the point on corporate taxes interesting. Corporate taxes, according to John, never punish the company and instead punish the consumer through higher costs and thus higher prices. It would be better to remove corporate taxes and allow more freedom to invest. This also has the added benefit of removing the incentive companies have to hire smart people to find tax loopholes.

Josh Luber on Sneakers, Sneakerheads, and the Second-hand Market
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/01/josh_luber_on_s.html
This one was half about the economics of sneakers and half about the data science. I think both were interesting, but I preferred the data science part of it. I've never been a sneakerhead but I've had friends who were really into sneakers. The economics were pretty clear; low supply (rarity) and high resale prices drive people to wait in line and generates a huge resale market (like concert tickets, some clothing brands, Supreme metro cards etc.). The data analysis part was really interesting. Cleaning up data from ebay auctions & pricing the shoes correctly is a really really difficult problem, and it was cool to listen to the various problems. I especially found interesting the problem of misjudging prices anecdotally. Since undervalued shoes are quickly bought on ebay, if you spend a lot of time looking at the data, you would tend to have a higher price point for the shoe, just because of sampling bias. 

I particularly liked the comparison between shoes and drugs, e.g. central supply chain, various distributors, lots of resellers...

Chris Blattman on Sweatshops
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/12/chris_blattman_1.html
Not really sure what I learned from this one, although I still thought it was interesting. Chris explained his experiment in Ethiopia where he split a couple hundred people into 3 groups, factory, entrepreneur, and control, and found that after a few years, a high number of the factory group changed jobs or left factory jobs, and entrepreneurs tended to have pretty decent return on the initial capital and be happier. This suggests that factory jobs and industrialization may not be the only or optimal solution for poverty.

One particular point I found interesting was about lacking middle management. Middle level management was often most lacking in these sweatshop, people who can organize and run the factory themselves. Chris points to this as an attractive part of Ethiopia/ Kenya, with a fairly developed middle class and a stable economy. 

If nothing else, I appreciate the lack of a strong call to action. The experiment was localized and certainly had interesting results but may not apply to all of Ethiopia, let alone all of the countries where there are still sweatshops.

Abby Smith Rums on Remembering, Forgetting, and When We Are No More
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/06/abby_smith_rums.html
Not that impressed with this one... agree that we should preserve the past and agree that it's important to engage stuff in its context, not really sure what I learned. To be fair though I also skipped a big chunk of it.

Jason Zweig on Finance and the Devil's Financial Dictionary
www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/06/jason_zweig_on.html
This one was good, and then ok, and then REALLY good. There were four things in particular I found interesting:

1) Jason describes how in 30 years of financial advising, most of what he does is just repeating himself several times a year, since good financial advice doesn't change very often. Instead, the newer stuff that comes out often turns out to be bad for the investor. 
2) The instantaneous access to information anytime we want is a very bad thing, and often prompts us to make hasty decisions out of fear or greed. I quote, "The greatest asset an investor can own is self-control."
3) Teaching finance to kids through competition is a horrible idea, because it teaches a) gambling b) trading on margin c) financial markets as a contest. Instead we should focus on teaching basic arithmetic, humility, and self-control (admittedly hard).
4) Sort of unrelated, but "No individual can assist or save the age. He can only express that it is lost." - Kierkegaard, and his father's response: "Well, he's right. But that's why you have to try to assist or save the age." I thought that was lovely. 

Tom Wainwright on Narconomics
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/tom_wainwright.html
This podcast was about narconomics, i.e. the economics behind the drug industry. Tom explains how typical efforts in the War on Drugs involves destroying the supply of the drug through ways such as spraying pesticide from planes on poppy fields or burning supply that they find. This is an ineffective way to combat the use of drugs, because, and I found this super interesting, the cost of the raw material is not even close to the cost of the final product. To produce 1kg of cocaine requires 1 ton of poppy seed, which costs 500 dollars, but is marked up progressively until it reaches the United States, rising up to 20,000 and finally to 100,000+ before entering the hands of the actual consumer. Tom draws the analogy between trying to increase prices by hurting supply and trying to increase prices of art by increasing the cost of paint. The marginal increase in material cost is so much smaller that the effect will be miniscule.

Russ and Tom then discuss how hurting demand is a better strategy, and here is where I started to find the podcast less interesting. I didn't really hear any concrete ways to hurt demand, although they mentioned stuff like helping addicted people, educating younger people to not do hard drugs, etc. One thing I found interesting was Tom's discussion on marijuana and its legalization. By legalizing marijuana, we make it safer, since it becomes a legitimate business that doesn't have to be largely done in cash, and more importantly, we can rely on the FDA for federal regulation on marijuana instead of state by state. I am curious if his perspective on all drugs is to legalize, allowing for better regulation and completely killing the market of the drug cartels. Kind of interesting stuff. I find my favorite podcasts are the economics meets unexpected field, such as the sneakerheads one.

Michael Munger on Slavery and Racism
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/08/munger_on_slave.html
Big fan of Mike Munger... I liked the BIG one as well, will probably watch some more of his. This one was about a paper he co-authored about the institutions of slavery. Munger defines racism in his paper as combination of bigotry and an institutionally privileged position (so it is difficult for minorities to be racist, although everyone can be a bigot). Munger argues that in order to justify slavery, slave owners of the South had to create an ideology to persuade themselves that slavery was good, leading to the creation of these institutes of racism to match these moral beliefs and logical conclusions.

They had economic and social incentives to do so, since there were many more slaves and a greater economic need for slaves. Munger discusses this from a Humean perspective, arguing that reasons are the slaves of passion, and passion ultimately comes from self interest. Because of this self interest & these incentives, slave owners self deceived themselves into thinking that slavery was good through racism. It is not a concerted planned central creation; it is more an emergent phenomenon from this shared set of ideal ideals. 

I found this point really interesting- Munger applies the veil of ignorance to racism. Suppose we all go into a room, and when we come out, some are going to be slaves, some are not, independent of who we are when we go into the room. If you still believe in slavery, then that could be your impartial spectator standard, but if you don't, then there's not much of a moral argument there.

Robert Frank on Dinner Table Economics
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/01/robert_frank_on_3.html
This one is slightly different from most podcasts in that they discuss a variety of different cases of "dinner table economics." According to studies, a lot of students after taking their economics courses cannot answer/ apply basic economic principles to questions any better than students without any experience. To that end, Russ and Robert talk about some real world problems with interesting economic solutions.

Q1) Why old wine is more expensive than new wine?
A) Old wine is more expensive because of 1) demand shrinks as more and more people drink the limited old wine and 2) there is an additional cost to old wine (which is the return on investment if it was sold immediately and that money was put into a bank account). Similarly, and I thought this was more interesting, what happens to the price of pork when the price of corn goes up (assuming pigs eat corn)? The price of pork will go up in the long run to accommodate for the greater cost, but the price of pork will go down in the short run as pigs become more expensive to keep, so more pigs will be slaughtered and brought to market.

Q2) Why do men rent tuxedos, and women buy wedding dresses?
A) If we assume (and I think it's fair to do so) that women generally want unique wedding dresses, and the sizing of wedding dresses varies much more greatly than sizing of tuxedos, then there is a much greater cost to maintaining and keeping enough dresses for rent (something Robert calls money on the table assumption). As a result, renting dresses might end up being more expensive than just buying them.

Q3) Why is it more expensive to rent bikes than cars?
A) Similar to before, because of scale, cars are much easier to rent than bikes, and require less maintenance, and they are often cheaper to buy (because they have a special deal with the car company & they purchase in bulk). On the other hand, bikes require some custom tinkering, and the size just isn't there to support more efficient ways of renting bikes.

Pretty interesting, but nothing too difficult or profound (although those are maybe just my thoughts after listening to the answers).

Robert Aronowitz on Risky Medicine
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/11/robert_aronowit.html
This podcast was about how the healthcare industry is increasingly focused on risk reduction instead of treatment, and highlights the high opportunity cost. I found this one specifically enlightening especially since I was born and raised in Taiwan, and in many Asian countries the norm is to take medicine, see a doctor, or get a checkup as a default response.

Because of over diagnosis and risk centered medicine, a lot of money is wasted on unnecessary checkups and false positives. These results and checkups are often invasive procedures that are physically taxing on the patient and also cause a lot of psychological stress and anxiety. One example Robert mentions is how mammograms are now a routine part of a woman's annual checkup when data suggests that these mammograms often do more harm than good (although, of course, data is complicated and not always black and white). Another closely related example is PSA tests for prostate cancer. A high PSA level often means recurring 6 month PSA exams to monitor changes, and Robert finds that many men get a prostatectomy to not only reduce the risk of cancer but also to get rid of the anxiety that comes with it. I am reminded of the Scrubs episode where Dr. Kelso introduces full body screenings at Sacred Heart, and Dr. Cox tries to persuade patients to not get one to prevent the test results from driving them crazy. 

I think the key to his argument is that a lot of data from clinical trials is incomplete or inconclusive, and it is dangerous to rely on partial data since we still know very little. A procedure with a slim and dubious statistically better chance at detecting an illness accompanied with a much greater opportunity cost just doesn't really make much sense.

I am a little torn though, because even if it's irrational, I doubt I will ever tell my parents to not get regular checkups...

Books of February 2017

In February I read:

The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Roadmap to Financial Independence and a Rich Free Life
- J L Collins

Pretty good book. This book comes from his blog, which comes from a series of letters he wrote to his daughter about investing advice. I like the way he presents the material, and it's written in a simple and engaging way (I read the book in an afternoon + an evening). I thought the chunks on what to invest specifically (VTSAX) and the bits on retirement funds, tax brackets, HSAs, and social securities were particularly helpful. I found afterwards I had a pretty good understanding of IRAs and corporate retirement plans (or at least for me personally), which is pretty useful info. It was already kind of a short read, but I think the beginning and the end could've been shortened a lot; he repeats himself quite often. Really the first and last parts of the book can be condensed into buy index funds, and buy Vanguard.

A good read if you're interested learning more about a simple and popular investing strategy, or if you just want to learn some useful stuff about managing your money. A lot of the material is also already on his great blog.

Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter

This book is a gem written by a genius and everyone should read it. I share my thoughts on the book here.

Monster - Naoki Urasawa

Sooooo good. I read 20th Century Boys by the same author a year ago and it blew me away. I read the entire manga in 2-3 days, everyday until 5 am, and had vivid dreams of Friend. Monster was kind of a similar experience. Monster & 20th Century Boys are both really famous works, and they are both rightfully regarded as classics, sitting at the top of many people's best manga ever lists.

The art is decent but not amazing; the main strength lies in the exposition & the characters. The twists are actually surprising and the story is seriously gripping, one of the best psychological thrillers I've ever read (novel or manga or otherwise). The characters are also really really great. There are only two main protagonists, so most of the characters come and go, but all of them are important to the story and serve to further develop the plot. Despite their short appearances (so many people die...), in 1-2 chapters Urasawa can make you genuinely care about his side characters, and he does a great job of showing the good and the bad of people, and the nuances in between. Each character has a motivating back story, and very few characters are easily bucketed as good or bad. I liked the manga a lot; if you're in the mood for a darker read with a great story and great cast then definitely give it a read.

The Arabs, A History - Eugene Rogan

A few weeks ago I asked for recommendations on books on the Middle East, since I wanted to learn more about that region. All I knew before reading this book came from spotty MUN research and some random bits and pieces of information, so I was hoping to start with a comprehensive book on the history of the Middle East and the Arab world to build a good base to read other books. A lot of people suggested The Arabs by Rogan, also used in Khalidi's class.

I really really really enjoyed this book. Starting from the Ottoman control over the Arabs, Rogan explores modernization and reform, Arab bids for independence, colonialism and its challenges, the two world wars, Arab nationalism and its decline, oil, Islam, the Cold War, and the tumultuous early 2000s. The book was pretty dense, and had a lot of information (as can be expected by a compact volume of Arab history), but was always very easy to read. It was never boring, and I really liked the way he organized his book. Although mostly chronological, every chapter is organized by a theme, such as The Rise of Arab Nationalism or The Power of Oil, and Rogan discusses several Arab nations in relation to that theme. Every section is also closely related to its predecessor and its successor, showing how the Arab nations and the world at large changes and develops. I also particularly liked how he uses a broad range of primary sources to enrich his stories, giving them a personal element and giving us an insight into Arab thoughts and beliefs.

My only gripe with the book, and it is more a gripe with myself, is that it is difficult to trace the history of any particular nation. I found myself rereading chunks of the book and flipping back a lot to recall a name or previous events that happened in the country. It was only when I skimmed the book again after I finished it that I was better able to remember what happened in specific countries (I kept forgetting who Amir Faysal was and who invaded who in the Iran-Iraq War). I had to read parts of chapters over and over again to remember what happened in Lebanon.

This is a very thoughtful, educational book. Although at times it is very frustrating to read, and is not a particularly happy story, The Arabs is a wonderfully eloquent history of the Modern Arab world.

Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

This blog post is my review of Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, although to be technical this is really more of a summary/ attempt to convince you to read this book. The only real review I have of this book is that it is brilliant and everyone should read it.

I picked up this book a year and a half ago thanks to Steve Yegge's blog post, and this is one of the smartest books I have ever read. When I say smart, I don't mean the subject material of the book is difficult (although it sure is), or reading the book makes you smart (although it probably will help). I mean that the author and the book, not the reader, are smart in the structure and content of the dialogues, the organization of the book, the braid he weaves connecting all these different topics, and just the various ways the book manages to refer to itself or talk about itself.

My first read through of this book was during my lunch breaks at OTC Markets, and after reading this book I started to read some reviews of it. One of the reviews that I read linked me to a retrospective by Hofstadter, who wrote 20 years after the book was published that most people misunderstood his book as a random collection of things he finds interesting, and about how "math, art, and music are totally the same thing at the core man!!!" I found this tremendously funny and a little self gratifying since I thought I was clearly not one of those people. Months later, when I was recommending this book to a friend, he asked me what the book was about.

Confidently, I answered- "Oh, this book is about how Godel, Escher, and Bach's ideas are connected and interwoven and how systems are limited and there's some stuff about Godel's incompleteness theorem and minds and each chapter is preceded by a dialogue between Achilles and a tortoise..."

And that was when I realized I needed to reread the book.

So this is my second attempt at reading through GEB, with the goal of really getting what this book is about. This time, while I was reading, every time I'd finish reading a chapter or two I would take notes on what I'd learned from the chapter (they are messy, but they are unedited here). I planned on writing this post from the very start of my read through, and many times I felt like I should give up. One of the reasons is because Hofstadter is much smarter than I am, and I have none of his wit, intelligence, or way with words, so what he says in a super dense book I am surely incapable of capturing in a short blog post. I also felt like I was doing the book a big injustice, and I wanted to avoid condensing the book in a crappy lossy way, losing a lot of its beauty and brilliance in the meanwhile.

I decided to keep going partly because I was already halfway, but mostly because I felt like it was helping me understand the book better. Perhaps that is why this blog post is a little messy still- I just couldn't make up my mind what I wanted this post to be or who I was writing this post for. But my original goal was threefold:

1. to better understand GEB
2. to convince you to give the book a shot
3. to be corrected if I get anything wrong

So what is GEB about?
GEB is, as Hofstadter describes it, a "very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter." It is an attempt to describe, postulate, and perhaps understand how consciousness and intelligence and notions of beauty and truth emerge from inflexible, hardwired neurons. How does the concept of "self" emerge from things as selfless as stones or ants? This question is key to AI, because before we attempt to program "artificial" intelligence, we must first understand what "real" intelligence is, and where it comes from.

I hope to roadmap parts of his attempt here.

The first half of the book, dubbed GEB, lays down some of the groundwork of the book, and prepares us for understanding Godel's Incompleteness Theorems.

1. Any formal system able to do elementary arithmetic is either inconsistent or incomplete.
2. Any formal system able to express its own consistency can prove its own consistency if and only if it is inconsistent. 

This is explained in detail in the book, I am both unwilling and unable to explain it here.

Some precursors include the notion of formal systems, with a natural subgoal being establishing a formal system that can express all statements of number theory with rules that correspond to our reasoning. The idea of theorems & non theorems is linked to the idea of figure and ground in art (especially in Escher's work). He also looks at notions and origins of meaning, introducing propositional calculus and its extension, a formal system he calls Typographical Number Theory (TNT). TNT is created to be capable of expressing all number theoretic reasoning in a formal system via rigid symbol manipulation.

The next step is to "destroy" TNT as part of his proof of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

To do so, Hofstadter introduces the idea of "Godel numbering" of a system, of mapping symbols of a formal system onto numbers. This is a key part of the proof allowing us to recreate the Liar's Paradox ("This sentence is false", more detail here) in TNT by allowing strings of TNT to talk about TNT. More formally, we can make statements about formal systems expressible in numbers, so expressible in number theory, so expressible in TNT! In essence, with symbols in TNT, you can express statements about TNT by applying Godel numbering to itself!!! These ideas are a very distilled summary of Part 1 (GEB), the first 9 chapters of the book.

In Part 2 (EGB), Hofstadter shifts gears and focuses more closely on his ideas of consciousness and intelligence, as well as a more detailed proof of Godel's theorems. We start by looking at different levels of description in computer systems and in brains. Computers are divided into several different levels from bits to machine language to procedural to assembly, with each successive higher level making communication more natural. This raises the interesting question of whether or not the brain is built in a similar set of levels, since this question is deeply tied into the possibility of equivalent intelligence in computers. If computers are supported on the lowest level by hardware, by bits, how is thought supported by the brain, and what is the hardware of the mind? On the lowest level we have neurons, on the highest level we have thought, and Hofstadter suggests that in the middle layers lie symbols, complicated references that trigger and are triggered by other symbols.

We come back to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem when Hofstadter introduces Bloop, FlooP, and GlooP, three computer languages with increasing computation power. FlooP is a Turing Complete language (for those familiar with CS Theory), and GlooP is purely hypothetical  (since everything computable is computable by a Turing Machine according to the Church Turing Thesis). An interesting sidenote: some users on wikiwikiweb suggested that adding pimc, pifl, pire (purely theoretical) to FlooP would make GlooP. 

From FlooP and GlooP, Hofstadter does a detailed second passthrough Godel's theorem, introducing the Godel string G (the equivalent of the Liar Paradox for TNT), and shows how it is constructed and its undecidability in TNT.

We now have a proof of TNT's incompleteness (assuming consistency of TNT), so the next natural step is to show how this is applicable to ALL formal systems of sufficient power, not just TNT. Using something analogous to Cantor's diagonal method, Hofstadter shows how there is an "essential incompleteness" in all of these systems, and somehow as soon as a system has the basic conditions needed to be consistent or sufficiently powerful Godel's method can be applied.

What are some other examples through which Godel's theorem can be woven? Well, it turns out that there is an interesting analogy between self reference and self replication. Hofstadter compares self reference in Godel's theorem versus self replication in biology , particularly DNA and its self replication, relating sufficiently strong cellular support systems that permit self replication to sufficiently powerful arithmetical formal systems to permit self reference.

In both of these examples, it is the LEVEL mixing that is very important, the presence of self reference that results in the applicability of the Godelian method.

If all computer languages are equal in power to FlooP, and we are trying to simulate mental activity with computing power, how is computing power related to human thought, and can we simulate thought in machinery? If we view thinking as high level descriptions of a system governed by simple and strict rules on a lower level, can we replicate these high level descriptions on a lower level that doesn't consist of neurons? Hofstadter suggests because intelligence doesn't lie in the lower levels, but in higher levels of mixing, mental processes of any sort can be simulated by a computer program written in a Turing Complete language. He calls this the AI version of the Church-Turing Thesis since this belief is at the underpinning of all efforts in AI.

Hofstadter devotes the next two chapters of the book to retrospects and prospects of AI. Interesting retrospects include checkers, chess, translation, music composition, and language programs. I would be really interested in what Hofstadter has to say about current advances in AI, namely self driving cars, Alpha Go, and Google Translate, and how "intelligent" our artificial intelligence is nowadays. Interesting prospects include the AI idea of frames, similar to schemas or layers of context, which leads to a discussion on how different concepts interact and how symbols are created, manipulated, and compared. A question I had was: if we create a beautiful work of art or a piece of music from a computer program, and no listener can distinguish the piece as computer generated rather than human generated, can we still say that the work is not really music or art because the creator (computer) might not necessarily understand it?

The last chapter of the book, Strange Loops, or Tangled Hierarchies, is a wonderful summary of some of the core concepts of the book, looking at other examples of strange loops and how Godel, Escher, and Bach tie together in an Eternal Golden Braid.

A major theme explored in the book and repeated in chapter 20 is

“Underneath every tangled hierarchy is an inviolate level, whether we see it or not”

Another big point I think I understood better from the second reading is that consciousness, intelligence, sense of self, and all the things that make us confidently divide humans and machines are high level phenomenons. These epiphenomenons are based on interactions between levels, where the top level reaches down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time determined by the bottom level. There is no specific place in the brain where we can point to and say "here is where consciousness is stored! Here is where the Philly cheesesteak symbol is stored!" On a low level, the hardware of our minds is strict, but on a high level, a fuzzy, informal level, epiphenomenon emerge. Therefore, to simulate intelligence in machines, Hofstadter proposes we must be able to simulate this same kind of fuzzy level mixing, this symbol manipulation that we do naturally in our minds in our programs.

This is the eponymous Eternal Golden Braid, and in my mind, this is what Godel Escher Bach is really about. The mathematician, the artist, and the musician are featured precisely because the strands of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Escher's art, and Bach's fugues share the integral core of level mixing and self reference, woven together in this book into an Eternal Golden Braid.

So that's my summary of GEB: EGB. There are many ways to view the book; I presented one that's roughly chunked along chapters. I think another interesting (but probably less fruitful) way to chunk the book is by fields. In his book, Hofstadter discusses formal systems, computer architecture, biology, neuroscience, computer languages, AI, mathematics, art, and music, and I probably missed a few more. Perhaps one of the reasons why the core of this book is so hard to grasp is because he touches on so many topics and addresses so many things in a variety of forms.

Like Steve Yegge said, the book is a bit like really good chocolate cake- really rich and yummy, but also really hard to eat more than 1 or 2 servings of. Some people suggest that the reader skip around, read a few pages here and there, and pick up whatever section is interesting to them. I personally think that is a bad strategy for GEB. The author has a goal, a roadmap of ideas connected in a way that was only made clear to me when I read the chapters sequentially and understood each chapter relative to each other.

That being said, I think there are many levels of enjoying the book. The dialogues are a delight to read; his examples are interesting; the connections are brilliant, and I think there's a lot to take away even if not read completely or read out of order.

This is probably one of the most difficult blog posts I've written, and maybe the one with least value, because this book really just defies description. You really just have to read it, or even just parts of it. I hope you find it as interesting and illuminating as I did.