Let's not dismiss the guy's opinion off-hand.. I also know people whose opinions I respect and who find GED pretentious and shallow. Personally, I found it extremely well written (although somewhat nonuniform) and extremely insightful as well. I just wish I had read it earlier, say, when I was 14, rather than after a CS education.
I refer to my previous comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3398873 I understand the subject well, so the book sounded to me like an explanation to children of something that isn't really so difficult. Also, it was pretentious (too long for the subject; for example Gödel's proof is a very short paper, I won't waste my time re-reading it in a huge tome for god's sake). I liked the effort the author put into making the book and I understood what he tried to accomplish, but it didn't work to me. After all the hype, I tried really hard to like it and I didn't think the half I had the patience to read was life changing at all, more like boring.
I went to the same grad school as the author did and got a PhD in physics there. Most of the professors I knew who taught the guy said the same thing to me about the book. It's just awful.
Could you elaborate? I read it this summer, and while I found that the glue between the chapters was a bit weak(I think the central theme isn't strong enough, no wonder he prefaces the 2nd edition trying to explain what the heck the book is about), it was a pleasure to read. I believe I had an intuition for Gödel's proof(which I have already forgotten), while I probably never have had the guts of trying to understand the real thing.
So, you mean "awful" like, at some level of Math/Physics the whole thing seems fuzzy and inaccurate or just "awful" even for non Physics Phds.
Fair enough, but I think you must back up your point.
I can see how it could be seen as pretentious, but not all round awful. He certainly appeals to many lofty ideas which may not be entirely justified by the technical material, but the technical material itself is certainly sound as far as I can tell. The main criticism I would make is that he does not draw a clear enough boundary between accepted mathematical fact and his own speculation.
For me, the thing I like about the book is that it is almost a total mixture of formal logic and poetry. If you don't like it, that is a subjective aesthetic judgement. Same goes for his prose style.
I suppose if you were already fully exposed to all the mathematical concepts in the book when you read it, it would have a lot less value. If on the other hand it is almost your first exposure to these ideas, it's like freebasing pure logic while hanging out in alice's wonderland. Great fun, but I agree not a formal examination of the ideas. It isn't really meant to be as far as I can tell.
I still can not make out whether you have read the book or not.
You went to the same school as the author(I presume you mean the OP in the reddit thread), and you knew the professors who taught the guy didn't like the book. Is that all you are basing your opinion on?
GEB isn't a physics book, so I don't see how "the professors who taught this guy" say matters - it's all too common that people don't like books that directly relate to their fields; especially so when they deeply vested in their field.
Also, opinion is divided on usefulness of other seminal works as well; to quote a few from comp. sci. - SICP, K&R, TAOCP.
I think comments like that kind of miss the point. The book isn't supposed to be a textbook. It's supposed to get you interested enough in the subject to want to study it further; that's when you go read the textbooks.
