Matt: 0:14

Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics This is our 24th and final episode on Good Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstetter. Hey, John. How are you? doing?

Jon: 0:33

Hey, Matt. How are you

Matt: 0:34

I am doing all right. We are finally at the end

Jon: 0:39

Yep.

Matt: 0:39

of a very long journey, a long and unusual journey. It's as if we fell down the Allison Wonder Rabbit hole of go to Lecher Bach.

Jon: 0:50

Yeah. And then fell into a strange loop, which. Like loop back to the top and we just kept falling in it.

Matt: 0:57

It's kind of a Klein bottle esque contorted geometry.

Jon: 1:01

Yes, exactly.

Matt: 1:03

actually kind of amazed that he did not talk about Klein bottles at some point during this, uh,'cause.'cause I feel like a Klein bottle kind of has

Jon: 1:10

it's like a physical manifestation. Yeah.

Matt: 1:14

loop.

Jon: 1:15

It also just seems like something Escher would draw.

Matt: 1:18

Now, are you able to have a real physical Klein bottle, or is everything just a fake, like is it fake,

Jon: 1:26

Well, there is a number file video where a guy has a Kline bottle, but yeah, it might have been just an approximation of Aline Bottle I almost think by definition it can't exist'cause it like doesn't have any,

Matt: 1:41

It has a self intersection. Right.

Jon: 1:43

yeah.

Matt: 1:44

So that's what I'm saying. Like I think what has to happen is in order for that self intersection to work, you kind of need to cut through the side in a way that you can, I think you can make it, but it, it, it punches out in a way. I think you should technically. Have to have both the one surface and remain intact, and then the tube also like remain fully intact. So like, I don't think that that works.

Jon: 2:12

And once you have a Klein bottle, can you then use it for anything? Like you can't actually put liquid in it, right?

Matt: 2:18

I don't, I don't know. This is a good, this is a good question. Um,

Jon: 2:22

answered these questions on the number file video, but it's just been a while. Uh,

Matt: 2:26

So anyway, we are at the end and our, our typical, our typical procedure is to ask a few questions, do a, do a little, little book review.

Jon: 2:38

Let's do it.

Matt: 2:39

All right. I'll start, I'll start off. Who is gonna get the most value from reading this book?

Jon: 2:48

It's a good one. I, I mean, I found this material to be valuable, but I also found it in a weird way to be not valuable at all. it's a philosophical book. It has very, I would say that it like borders way more so on philosophy than like the typical thing that I read. Like, I generally find raw philosophy to be like annoying almost because it doesn't seem to have any applicable purpose that, that's not to say that I don't like philosophy. I mean, I love thinking about philosophy and morality and various things like that. But when it's just discussed in the abstract, it's not as interesting and, and some of this book felt like that to me, where it was just these very abstract discussions of what is knowledge. How can it be attained? but yeah, who would get the most value outta this? I realize I'm not even answering the question. I'm just kind of beating around the bush.

Matt: 3:45

Well, I mean, it sounds like you're saying no one gets any value outta this book.

Jon: 3:50

Right. Which is not what I think at all. I think a person like us, like someone who is interested in software, algorithms, math. Someone who's a little bit more analytical. I think this book is just fascinating to someone like that. Um, you know, the discussions of like topographical number theory and sort of determining truth by doing like logical operations, like that sort of thing is, is really, really interesting. And, and I think to a person like that, who's sort of. bias in that direction in the first place. The philosophical aspects are also very interesting. like, I really, really like this book and I'm super happy that we read it, but it's, it's just such an interesting book.'cause it's not, it's not really like a textbook, like it's not a reference manual for anything, but it's also not like a raw philosophy thing. It's like this, it occupies this bizarre space in

Matt: 4:54

there's very real, uh, I mean, I think the biggest thing that this book talks about is just that you're never going to be able to come up with a formal, logical system where you're able to prove every statement that is true.

Jon: 5:12

Right. Yeah. Which is a huge

Matt: 5:16

so I guess if, if you're, that immediately takes it out of the realm of some sort of purely philosophical naval gazing because it feels like no, there's actually very real world ramifications to that. you know, if for no other reason than, uh. It was able to get Russell and Whitehead to stop, uh, making more lay layers of Principia Mathematica or whatever it was.

Jon: 5:40

Yeah, I, I'd probably also argue that this book has more. Salience today. Then it probably had like, say in the nineties or early two thousands,

Matt: 5:52

yeah.

Jon: 5:52

because of its discussion of AI and how it sort of predicts a lot of what AI is today and a lot of how it functions, uh, in a really interesting way. And I think, yeah, again, if you're a person like us who's analytical and interested in these types of things, like that material is just completely fascinating. I think, uh,

Matt (2025-06-06): 6:11

I think, um, the person who would get the most value out of this book is,

Matt: 6:15

Goodell

Matt (2025-06-06): 6:17

so, uh. probably,

Jon: 6:20

I mean, go,

Matt: 6:21

to go, back in time.

Jon: 6:22

wonder if GLE would be happy with this.'cause it is very much like a, you know, it's almost like a tribute to gle.

Matt: 6:29

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, for all of the lip service he pays Bach and Escher, they really are trimmings, around the edges of this book, which is really so much more about. The work that Goodell did,

Jon: 6:47

right. It was also like, it's interesting to have this deep discussion of good old's work.'cause it's something that I never really focused on. I think because I'm such a concrete person, like I just don't like these. Abstract ideas that don't appear to have any value. I'll be honest, I kind of always thought of Les Incompleteness as that. It's like, what am I gonna, you know, oh, okay, girdles incompleteness, now what do I do with it?

Matt: 7:15

Yeah.

Jon: 7:16

but this book, sort of discussing it in depth gave me a lot of new appreciation for the ideas. okay. I think we should move on to the next question. Otherwise, I might blather endlessly. How much impact.

Matt: 7:33

podcast. It's just one big blather.

Jon: 7:37

Yeah, but I try not to go too far off the deep end, even though we do that all the time. How much impact did this book have on you?

Matt: 7:44

if I'm. Giving a straight answer and really kind of looking at my life. I feel like there is very little that this book has changed about how I'm going to go forth and live my life. I, I really can't say

Jon: 8:03

that.

Matt: 8:04

Yeah. Like I wasn't the kind of person who was trying to find this. Well, actually it's funny because in a way, the project that I'm working on, this Glass Goals Project, it feels maybe a little bit like an exercise in trying to find this perfect representational system. And maybe, maybe I should, uh, try to kind of bring myself back from the edge of chasing this platonic ideal of being able to represent any relationship of knowledge. So, yeah, I mean maybe, maybe it has a bigger, I don't know if the takeaway is to accept imperfection.

Jon: 8:38

Oh, that is an interesting takeaway. It's kind of this, No matter how much you are able to represent, you'll never be able to represent everything.

Matt: 8:47

Yeah. It, I guess the question is how, how broad of a takeaway is good will. Theory of incompleteness? Is it this pretty narrow thing where it's like, if you are working in this formal system and you want it to represent every true statement, you're not gonna be able to do that? Or is it this broader statement where it actually makes claims about you're always going to have trade-offs in anything and you're never gonna be able to achieve perfection.

Jon: 9:18

That's a question that I feel still has not really been answered for me. And this goes back to like the practicality of goodes incompleteness. Like what does it break? What does it prevent humanity from achieving?

Matt: 9:32

I guess one, so one, one trade off people. Uh. People have is basically energy cost, right? Of things where it's like, if you're thinking about an algorithm, if one algorithm takes more, is less computationally efficient, but better, you're trading off against energy usage, basically. Like we can't expend enough energy in a short enough period of time to answer this question the way you want, but it, it feels like, let's just get more energy. Like, there's so much energy out there in the, in the universe

Jon: 10:06

right. I mean, we're mining Bitcoin.

Matt: 10:09

exactly. Like it feels like that's the one thing where if, if we just relentless, relentlessly pursue more energy that we can just always go with because,'cause I guess'cause it's like this complexity you put energy in into this complicated system. You can do anything. You can do

Jon: 10:27

Yeah,

Matt: 10:29

So.

Jon: 10:30

I mean, achieving the infinite energy, that'll be,

Matt: 10:35

Solve all problems.

Jon: 10:37

it will solve a lot of problems. for sure. Will

Matt: 10:40

Um, alright. So did the author achieve his or her goals? Um, also we need to, we need to read a book by a woman. Uh, uh, I feel like I.

Jon: 11:00

We do. We

Matt: 11:00

We, we picked our, we haven't announced our next book. Right?

Jon: 11:04

We haven't, so we could, we could pivot, do a book by a woman. I would be totally down, some, like Ate a Lovelace, old

Matt: 11:12

did she write a book?

Jon: 11:13

I don't think she's written any books, but we could read her letters. Uh, did the author achieve his or her goal? I think. I mean, this is a tough one'cause it's like what was his goal? But I think he did, I think he did achieve his goal. This, this work seems comprehensive in a way that like it is a true kind of magnum opus where I just can't think of other books that achieve this level of like depth and scope. Um, and so my guess is that he did achieve his goals. This, this felt like something that he worked on for a long time and just truly, you know, every little aspect of the book felt like something that he thought about endlessly. and yeah, I think that's part of the joy of reading it, is you're kind of, you kind of get this feeling like you're reading, you know, someone's really well thought out. thoughts on, on this topic. Uh, and I, and that's satisfying.

Matt: 12:17

It is a really hard book to, to pin down. You know, you talk about it being a distillation of his thoughts and I think that's, or I don't know if you used the word distillation, but it did have this stream of consciousness, energy to it. He's talking about Girdle's theory of incompleteness, and then he switches to, to this piece by Bach, and then he talks about this picture created by Escher. And in that way it feels like part of his intention was to inform, but part of his intention was to. Amuse and delight. You know, it's like, you know, it's kind of a, a parade of curiosities

Jon: 13:02

dude, I love that a hundred percent.

Matt: 13:04

he is kind of marching out in front of you.

Jon: 13:07

Yeah, it's like a campfire story, like,

Matt: 13:10

I.

Jon: 13:11

which I think was so cool. Like it's such a interesting way of packaging this information and I do think he probably. I mean 1979 ish, that's when this was published. Like this was a time where it was kind of a confluence of like, people were starting to figure out concepts in AI computing was like a relatively new thing. I don't know, I think he just felt this strong desire to like get his thoughts down in some form. and I think that. His thoughts were probably so varying that it was difficult to even find a form to, to put his thoughts down. And, and I think, like what you said, kind of a parade of curiosities, like that was kind of the only thing that can possibly encapsulate all of this stuff.

Matt: 13:58

maybe I did myself a disservice by not reading the dialogues more, but I, I found the dialogues kind of hard to get through sometimes. Like the one where he is talking about whether or not it's his birthday, tortoise and Achilles and they just ke keep on hammering that and hammering that and hammering that and it's like, all right, we get it. Uh.

Jon: 14:21

Yeah. No, he, his sense of humor, uh, like, I like his sense of humor, but it's also like, just extremely nerdy and it's kind of like, all right, let's move on.

Matt: 14:31

Yeah. It's like cl too clever by a half. You know? It's

Jon: 14:36

Yeah.

Matt: 14:37

all right, I think you're, you're being very cute here. and there were, there were some times where he was able to do these impressive, like nested. Tricks and, and they were cool. Uh, but other times it was just like a little bit, you are like, okay, we get it.

Jon: 14:53

yeah, yeah. But I think I, I mean, I completely agree. I think a lot of the book was sort of like that where. You know, he would just discuss some concept endlessly and you're like, alright, move on. Uh, or another thing he did was he would sort of like rediscuss something over and over again, but at like varying levels of depth and you would kind of get this impression like, okay, I wish you had just skipped, you know, three of these levels and like went from one to five or whatever. so I like, if I were to be critiquing the book, like that's definitely something. That I would call out the di the repetition and the dialogues. The overly, almost like saccharine, ridiculousness of the dialogues. Uh, and also just kind of the redefinition of things. But it is, it is also helpful. he's covering very difficult materials, so I think sometimes he would give you like a toe tip and then he would go a little deeper and, and that helps to understand the material.

Matt: 15:49

Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think metaphor is incredibly powerful, and I think that's kind of what he's trying to do with these dialogues. It's like, okay, let's try to. Bring this into a scenario that you're able to more easily internalize and then you can think about it in this abstract context.

Jon: 16:14

Alright, let's move to the next question, Ray. Goodle Escher Bach on a scale of negative one to one.

Matt: 16:22

I think this might be the best book that we have read, red, purely from a. My admiration of it as a work of art. Almost

Jon: 16:33

yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

Matt: 16:35

a few other books that we've read have felt so precisely crafted, I guess.

Jon: 16:42

It's so ambitious and it's amazing that he achieved his ambitions. I think a lot about this with movies. Like, I really like a movie that. Uh, sets out to achieve something and actually does it e even if it's simple, like I don't mind a movie that has sort of like a simple goal. You know, maybe it's like a one room tense thriller, you know, like a, some sort of hostage situation or something. Like a lot of movies revolve around that and if it sort of sets out a simple goal and achieves it, I like it. But there are some movies that set like really, really ambitious goals and actually achieve them. And those are obviously amazing. But then there's countless movies that set really ambitious goals and like, don't even get

Matt: 17:31

just don't deliver. Yeah.

Jon: 17:32

don't deliver at all. And those really bother me. And I feel like this book, the goals that he set in this book are one of the most ambitious things that I've seen in a book. And I feel as though he got, he either achieved them or got very close to achieving them.

Matt: 17:50

Yeah, I think, I think this was exactly how he intended this book to, you Don't get the po get the sense that there was any sort of sloppiness. He has all these like clever little jokes in there you know, he's inventing all these different words and so. The attention to detail required to make sure that that is all consistent throughout the whole book. And well done. Just would take an inordinate amount of work, I feel like.

Jon: 18:18

Yeah. What is your floating point? Rating?

Matt: 18:21

uh, I would give this a 0.92.

Jon: 18:25

Nice. Love it.

Matt: 18:27

you?

Jon: 18:28

I think I would've said something very similar. Not, I mean, now that you've said 0.92, I'm,

Matt: 18:34

That's the only possible you're anchored around that We should do make a process of writing it down first.

Jon: 18:40

we should do that.'cause I'm, I, like, I want to say, I would've said something really similar, you know, 0.92 to in, within the 0.9 and above range.

Matt: 18:49

Should we give, should we give like confidence intervals too? I mean, we might, we need to make this rating as nerdy as possible.

Jon: 18:56

Yeah, just, just after criticizing Douglas Hofstetter of his extreme nerdiness.

Matt: 19:01

oh. I mean, we never said we weren't hypocritical. So, um, all right, so 0.92, plus or minus 0.02.

Jon: 19:10

Yeah, I'm

Matt: 19:11

All right. Love it. All right. I think, I think we're ready to, ready to put good Escher Bach to bed.

Jon: 19:19

It's the end of an era, but I'm happy to move on. I'm excited about our next book. it's the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson,

Matt: 19:28

and now, do we want to qualify this at all? we're just like really enormous Elon Musk fans, and that's why we wanna dedicate.

Jon: 19:38

I think that that's part of what draws me to this material is I used to be an enormous Elon Musk fan, but now I think he's horrible and I dislike him. What I wanna do with our podcast though is, you know, read this material and just try to give our completely unbiased view. And hopefully with a unique lens that we can bring, like we, we were both software engineers for multiple decades between the two of us. Uh, and so we can probably speak to a lot of what he has done in a somewhat meaningful way. And that's sort of what I, what I was thinking we could do. Let's try.

Matt: 20:17

And try to get at, was he a success because of his talents or in spite of his, negative contributions to the things that he's worked on?

Jon: 20:27

absolutely. And maybe some amount of, you know, does he deserve the, the hate that he's getting? I feel like the answer to that question is somewhat self-evident in his own public, discourse.

Matt: 20:42

Yeah, but the idea is to try to dispassionately reserve judgment it's funny though, because, this book was released in 2023, right?

Jon: 20:52

Yeah, so this was like after a lot of his horribleness, but before

Matt: 20:57

A lot of his, a lot of his, like very more salient horribleness. Um, so we might need to do a little bit of a, kind of a newsy, uh, addendum. Not to mention that by the time we are at the end of this book, it'll probably be 2027. So,

Jon: 21:13

Yeah, that's true. It's a long book. I, we might, go over it in a different way than we did get at Cher Bach.'cause it's, there's so much material

Matt: 21:22

The other thing is the information density is almost certainly gonna be closer to something like a doom than, than good Cher Bach. So It's not like we're, each chapter is gonna introduce fundamental world changing concepts multiple times. So,

Jon: 21:39

Yeah. And just straight up ideas that I don't understand and don't even have the capability to understand.

Matt: 21:45

inventing new words and numerical systems. So, all right. Well, I will see you. See you next time. For the first section of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson.

Jon: 21:57

awesome. See you, Matt.