A worthless piece of crap. The book is nothing more than a jumbled mess of random elements from math, computer science, philosophy, biology, and who knows what else, that do not come together into a coherent whole. I have no idea why Hofstadter wrote the book, what point he is trying to make to the readers, and I certainly didn't learn anything from it. Reading this book was one of the biggest wastes of my time ever, so it was with a certain glee that I found out Hofstadter has accomplished absolutely nothing in the almost 30 years since the publication of this book; seems others share my viewpoint.