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fussballclub
I couldn't take Douglas Hofstadter seriously. I read I Am A Strange Loop instead of GED, which was supposed to expand on what he wrote in GED but he just comes across as a very confused, very woo-woo, very insecure man. It's a shame because he seems so highly-regarded in the Computer Science and maths world, but there's only so much crazy I can take.
He seems to have this idea that if you don't find the existence of recursion to be an almost religious experience then it's because you're first too stupid to understand it, and secondly you're afraid of it. It's mental. I know what recursion is, and I don't have this deep-seated dread of it. I just don't really think it's any more significant than a lack of recursion.
The reviews for GED don't seem to suggest anything like that in that book, though, so maybe he saved it all up for I Am A Strange Loop.