Review: Gödel, Escher, Bach

By Alan Go

I don't quite know how I decided that the best way to follow up Steven Pinker's epic history of violence was by picking up another 700 page mammoth, but apparently this did happen, which is why I spent the Christmas holidays trekking through Douglas Hofstadter's most famous work, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. For a certain type of geek, this is as close as you can come to a sacred book, with Hofstadter as some kind of god, or at least a prophet. When mentioned online, it is referred to with reverence, as its devoted followers drown out the odd detractor, with their unrestrained praise.

That may be overdoing it a little (or a lot), but the point still stands that a fair number of people consider this book to have played a major part in their lives. Entire university courses can be based around it.

At this point, I should probably try to summarise what the book is actually about, although I confess to being slightly nervous about doing so. Whilst fairly confident that I understand its central messages, I wouldn't say that I'm certain, and it wouldn't surprise me if some subtle point has passed me by.

It is not about Kurt Gödel, M.C. Escher, and J.S. Bach, at least not centrally. Instead, the main thesis of the book concerns how meaning can arise from meaningless symbols, by using formal systems which contain tricks such as self-reference, self-replication, recursion and strange loops, and by using tools such as paradox, infinity, and isomorphism, and particularly examining how this relates to the emergence of intelligence from unintelligent neurons. Throughout the book, the works of the three geniuses in the title are used as a touchstone to which all these concepts can be linked to, showing how the same ideas are mirrored in their work, and in real life.

Review: Ill Fares the Land

By Alan Go

Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today.

This is the opening line of the late Tony Judt’s short polemic about the crisis the Left has found itself in. Anybody who reads this and immediately begins nodding with a sincere expression will find plenty to like, and will no doubt admire the verve with which the book is written. I am sure it is a sentiment shared by many, but difficult to express with clarity; a problem to which the book tries to provide the answer.

The first chapter happens to draw largely from the last book I had read, and reprints many of the graphs from The Spirit Level in its call to reignite the fight against inequality. The message is an important one, and is referred back to frequently in the following chapters.

Judt tries to provide a brief history of the Left since the second world war, from the great enthusiasm for state planning and welfare that immediately proceeded it to the rise of individualism in the 60s, Thatcherism and Reaganism, and the decline in our belief in social democracy since then. Much of this broad brushstrokes history is told in such sweeping statements that it is easy to become sceptical of the simplicity of the narrative. In any case, I will admit to being unqualified to pronounce upon the accuracy of his account.

Review: The Spirit Level

By Alan Go

Confirmation bias, seeking out evidence that supports our pre-existing beliefs, is among the most pervasive of our cognitive flaws, and something worth being on constant guard for. Whilst I may find life comfortable in the liberal, secularist space of ideas I have carved out for myself, I still try to recognise the danger of reading piece after piece that I agree with.

For these reasons, I attempted to restrain my enthusiasm after finding a book subtitled Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. I have written before about my fondness for a system of Rawlsian egalitarianism, and if I had wanted a book that provided empirical support for such principles, I doubt it would have looked too different. It can’t be too often that philosophical theories end up being tested against the evidence, so I was wary of any thesis that managed to show that one of my favourite thinkers has turned out to be exactly right. It all seemed slightly too fortuitous for my liking, but I was optimistic and hopeful.

Review: The Better Angels of Our Nature

By Alan Go

In the IGCSE English language paper, the question was posed as to what historical time period we would most like to live in, were we given the choice. For various reasons, I maintained strongly at the time that the present was mostly definitely the place to be.

I had only suspicions about an overly romanticised past to go on at the time, but now I can safely claim that I have all the empirical backing that I could need.

In Steven Pinker’s latest tome, ‘The Better Angels of our Nature’, he seeks to lay out all the evidence for the historical declines of physical violence in all its forms, encompassing everything from wars and genocides, to infanticide and spanking, before taking some time to examine the causes of these declines by delving into the worlds of neurology and psychology.

With 700 pages of text, and a further 100 of notes, the volume is an imposing one. It is hard not to be intimidated, when starting a new chapter, you look ahead and realise there are over 100 pages of information left to go through on the subject.

It is a testament to Pinker’s skill as a writer that such a hefty subject never descends into dull academic prose or incomprehensible jargon. Instead we are given sentences that flow easily, spoken with a voice that neither patronises nor simply lectures. Nothing is dumbed down either. Pinker has no hesitation in explaining concepts of proability, randomness, logarithmic scales and the like, in order to give readers all the necessary tools to understand the various graphs and patterns under examination. The comprehensibility provides no clue as to the grand scope the book is trying to capture as a whole. Were you to give any small portion to any interested layperson, they would most likely be able to read, understand and enjoy it without any great difficulty.