Hofstadterian thinking also makes you a much more competent AGI programmer if you're into that kinda thing. In fact Hofstadter's team's Copycat is an example. ETA: Apparently pre-optimization-enlightenment Eliezer agrees.
I KNEW I was cool for having read GEB.
http://www.reddit.com/r/GEB/comments/nmy4p/starting_a_readthrough_january_17/
[Context: [1] waingro and I want to start a Reddit read-through of GEB.
I've done an [2] in-person MIT seminar where we read through the book twice before. I think a subreddit would be a great way to make the same experience available to anyone on the Internet!
My plan for when to start would be around January 17. Yes, that's almost a month from now, but it allows time for:
The read through is organized and run by Rob Speer who taught a seminar on GEB once as a senior and once as a grad student at MIT [1](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/special-programs/sp-258-goedel-escher-bach-spring-2007/). GEB is occasionally referenced on LessWrong and is considered and influential book by Eliezer Yudkowsky, the subject of a short review by LukeProg who recently claimed that it "[...] defied summary more than all the other books I had previously said "defied summary." If you are interested in reading GEB but have not taken the time to do so, I do not need to cite the research on how mechanisms such as commitment contracts are helpful to reaching goals. Joining this group would make the goal read Gödel, Escher, Bach more reachable than it otherwise would have been.