Negative Positive
Title: Enjoy it; don't dissect it!
Review: I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer Michael J Edelman who pointed out that most of the *serious* reviewers here misunderstand the point of the book. GEB is a thoughtful exercise in logical reasoning that proceeds, with frequent refreshment breaks along the way, to demonstrate not only how an impressive degree of complexity can arise from a compact basis of simple premises and directions, but also how the process can be driven by self-reference (recursion). The most profound outcomes of this process are ultimately the ordered universe, life and consciousness, although these may not be explicitly stated as such in the text. Anyone familiar with Conway's Game of Life, or tesselation automata (tiling the plane), will appreciate the analogies. Critical readers may not agree completely with the author's logical or philosophical bent, but will enjoy the mind-stretching exercises.
Is the review positive or negative? 