It changed my life as well -- along with other great books he wrote:

"The Mind's I", a collaboration with Daniel Dennett, is a more light read than Gödel Escher Bach which also talks about consciousness, emergence and cognition.

"Metamagical Themas" is a collection of fascinating articles he wrote for Scientific American after Martin Gardner stopped publishing his "Mathematical Games" (do you see what he did here?)

I can perceive the influence his ideas have in the way I raise my child, relate to people and act in the world. I would go as far as to say that my spirituality was sparked by his texts, specially those related to Zen and consciousness.

Sure, YMMV -- this is entirely subjective (as everything in life, really).

>It changed my life as well -

Lots of people are saying this here. May I ask how it changed your life?

It introduced me to cognition as a emergent phenomena (specially the chapter "Prelude ... Ant Fugue" [1]).

It made me think about various philosophical topics such as holism vs reductionism and syntax vs semantics, the meaning of "meaning", intelligence, cognition...

...and then absolutely blew them all with the Zen approach to life.

[1] http://themindi.blogspot.com.br/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-a...

GEB was one of the single biggest influences on me to leave the religion I was raised in. In short, GEB gave a sensible, intuitive, and non-magical explanation to things that I would have previously ascribed to a mystical soul that Jesus made.

This book set me down a line of really thinking and investigating and filling in the gaps that god was hiding in. Now I'm nonreligious.

This book might not change the median person's life, but it changed mine

Just a minor personal nit-pick; I still find the simple, base fact that we exist in this farking incredible reality to be magical and mystical AND with the benefit that we have the potential for literally fully grokking what the exact nature of "being" and "conscioussness" is at some point in the future.

That as we evolve our understanding and discover the next great secret that the universe holds for us, we will be continually and profoundly affected by how beautiful and blessed we are to simply have the opportunity to exist!

I would say that it changed my life. However, I read it when I was 18, at that point where any number of books have the ability to change your life.

Do you mind me asking how it changed it your life?

I was at the perfect level of education to appreciate the information in GEB. I was a young programmer and math enthusiast with an average high-school education. My knowledge of Boolean logic went as far as De Morgan's law. I knew next to nothing about classical music, functional programming, meta-mathematics, propositional calculus, Dadaism, or molecular biology.

Reading GEB felt like reading the Cliff Notes to an entire college education especially tailored for the kind of person I didn't yet realize I already was.

Add me to the chorus. I first read it in high school and it fascinated me from the first page. Living in an isolated small town, I instantly knew this was the sort of thing I'd been yearning for. I've read it a few times since.

Thomas Pynchon's "V." had the same effect.

It can definitely change the way you think about consciousness (and about software). Anyone who doesn't have their mind significantly altered by it is either a genius, extraordinarily well educated going in, or just doesn't get it.

That's a bit patronizing ... disclaimer - the book is sitting on my shelf, but I haven't got round to reading it.

You should totally read it! It's a good read. It made me realise a math book could be written in that way and actually be "rigorous".

For me, at 17 when I read it, math was just a bunch of symbols and exercises. It introduced me to logic and reasoning, made me think about the world differently.

It's like the real red pill in the matrix that's not just something you swallow. You think about it, and you start wondering what else you think you knew about math and the world can be challenged.

It made me a braver man. In that sense, it did change my life.

Also, mentions of genius is not unwarranted when you think about the 3 names mentioned: Godel, Escher, Bach. The book ties things back to how these three people thought about the world, and how their art and thinking can be tied into math.

I think if your mind isn't changed after reading about these figures, then you haven't really gotten it.

Hofstadter isn't necessarily the main attraction here. He created a framework (ie the structure of the book) where these subjects can be reasoned about.

Not to mention Lewis Carroll!

Admittedly, I read it in formative years, but until I read GEB, I didn't really grok what "genius" meant. Understanding strange loops in context of great thinkers who expressed it, and seeing strange loops as the nature of consciousness, and wondering how it could be expressed in software... blew my mind, in several senses of the phrase.

It's not patronizing, it's honest. Read the book, and you'll agree with me. (And it's hardly the only book that gets this credit - something like Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", or Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy, or any number of other books will fundamentally change how you think.)

It changed my life.