I Am a Strange Loop

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I Am a Strange Loop Page 57

by Douglas R. Hofstadter


  1906, four-syllable description of

  1931 (year)

  Nobel address of Albert Schweitzer

  Nombres remarquables, Les (Le Lionnais)

  nonbelievability of The True View

  “nondescript”, as paradoxical adjective

  nondualism, lure and lacunas of

  non-overlapping dots, human souls as

  non-prim numbers, see saucy numbers

  nonprovability and falsity, assumed equivalence of

  non-self-awareness: of mosquitoes; of robot vehicles

  “Non Serviam” (Lem)

  non-universality of dogs’ brains

  non-wellfounded set theory

  noodle conflict

  no one in brain at birth

  “no one left to be sorry for”

  “no symbols, no self”

  “not”, as not the source of strangeness

  notebooks filled with memories constituting soul-shards

  notes, isolated, lack of meaning of

  noun phrase, very long

  novel: as an abstraction; meaning of, as arising from letters or words; as a pattern copied in different cultures; as a teleportation device

  novelists as beings inventing other beings

  nucleotides

  number-crunching; ambiguity of; interpretable as text-processing, image-processing, etc.

  “Number One” as primary soul in a brain

  numbers: chameleonic nature of; dancing isomorphically to patterns; flexibility and richness of; invisibility of, in contemporary computers; mirroring formulas; as rich representational medium; as substrate for paradoxes

  number theory, patterns in

  numeral vs. number

  O

  obituary notices, one’s own

  object files

  objectively observable facts are irrelevant to the inverted-spectrum scenario

  obscure numbers, near no landmarks

  “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An” (Bierce)

  “Ode to a Box of Envelopes” (Jeannel King)

  “O du angenehmes Paar” (Bach)

  oil refinery, likened to brain

  Oleson, David

  omega-inconsistency of Y. Ted Enrustle’s work Prince Hyppia: Math Dramatica

  “one”, as banished word

  “one body, one name” as convention

  “one body, one soul” dogma (also “one body, one person” and “one brain, one soul”); see also caged-bird metaphor

  “one country, one people”

  one-dimensionality of the inverted spectrum

  144, salient square in Fibonacci sequence

  “On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems (I)” (Kurt Gödel, 1931)

  “On Formerly Unpennable Proclamations in Prince Hyppia: Math Dramatica and Related Stageplays (I)” (Gerd Külot, 1931)

  “or”, possible rule of inference for

  oracle for number theory (Göru)

  orchard filled with colored butterflies, as metaphor for distributed human souls

  order in disorder, as quest of mathematicians

  ordinary vs. Gödelian formulas of PM

  organ music

  other humans, represented in our brains

  “O thou charming bridal pair”

  Our Inner Conflicts (Horney)

  overlap of souls seen as zones in a space

  Overseas Chinese, as halo of Chinese people

  Owens, Jesse

  P

  P (the largest prime number)

  paeonic meter hidden in text

  page breaks, exerting control over content

  Pagnol, Marcel, analogy-mediated meanings in film of

  pairenthood, in Twinwirld

  pairsonal identity in Twinwirld

  pairsonal pronouns in Twinwirld

  pairsons, in Twinwirld; inability to imagine how identical twinns feel; strong resistance to breaking into two halflings

  “pangram”, self-referential, found by Lee Sallows

  panpsychism

  paper, valuable

  paradox: in Drawing Hands; grazing of; inside mathematics; irrepressibility of; key role in strange loops; self-reference and; useful for pinpointing weaknesses in foundations of mathematics

  paradoxophobia

  Paraparte, Doleon

  parenthood as soul merger

  Parfit, Derek; morphed into Napoleon; radicalness of views of; self-doubt expressed by

  parquet deformations

  particle physicist’s “I”

  particle viewpoint favored over “I”

  particles: disrespect for macroscopic categories; vs. higher-level entities as causes; as serving higher-level forces in brain

  Pascal, Blaise

  pattern implies reason

  pattern-searching in number theory

  pattern-seekers vs. pattern-disdainers

  patterns: causal potency of; infinite; reasons behind

  Peano, Giuseppe

  peanut-butter sandwich as flexible medium

  “Peanuts” episode

  pearl found in the Caspian sea

  “peck-order” hierarchy in brain

  peer pressure

  Penfield, Wilder

  Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers, The (Wells)

  pennable lines, dramaturgical conventions for

  people, as represented by symbols in brains

  people vs. country

  perception: in brains; in careenium; coarse-grainedness of; of consequences of one’s actions; of dancing symbols; as germ of “I”-ness; impossibility of suppression of; indispensability of, in creating an “I”; as level-changing shift in strange loop; of microscopic causes; of mosquitoes; of perceiver itself; primitive vs. fluid; vs. reception; in robot vehicles; as search for precedents and analogues; shades of gray of directness; through teleportation goggles; as two-way process; without perceiver

  perceptual systems: growing over time; impoverished

  perfect numbers, potential infinitude of

  person: as point of view; shallower and deeper aspects of

  personal gemma (Lem), as core of human identity; obliteration of; riding, diminished, on another’s hardware; see also Cartesian Ego

  personal identity: coalescing slowly over time; as determined by brain, not vice versa; as determined by dollop doled out; as determined by most intense source of perceptual input; as determined by naming conventions and pronoun conventions; as determined by serial number; as determined by slider on wire; as determined by strange loop’s content; as incoherent notion; lacking in sewing machines; puzzles about, in a world with Consciousness; shared by the two halves of a pairson; untrustability of claims about

  personality: layering of; space of

  perversity of metamathematical results

  Peterson, Nancy

  Pfeiffer, John

  philosophers: falling for Searle’s ploys; having ambitions of rigor; fear of being a zombie; knurking and glebbing without need for a brain

  philosophizing like Roger Sperry

  photograph: as evidence for reality; felt as meaningless; as set of soul-shards; triggering-power of

  physical activity: hypothetically inadequate to explain feeling; as insufficient for skeptics; as sufficient for SL #641

  physicality and “I”, conflict between

  physics: as opposed to free will; as the sole type of causality

  picket line in play, analogous to picket line outside theater

  Pickwick, Samuel, Esq.

  “Pig” (Roald Dahl short story)

  piggybacked mappings

  pig head, severed, on display

  Pig Latin as language

  piglet in Sardinian banquet

  pigments in eyes

  pinball machines and careenium

  pistons pushed by pressure of gas

  pitch: of audio feedback system; vs. rumble

  pixel patterns on TV screen: as coding for events; a
s meaningless patterns when seen by dogs; as teleportation technology

  planetoids, growing by collisions

  plant and shoots, opposing caged-bird metaphor

  plants as potentially having souls

  Plath, James

  Plato, as dialogue character

  plays about plays

  pleasure and displeasure as flipped sensations

  Pluto, dubious category membership of

  PM (formal system of Principia Mathematica); believed consistent by all logicians; destroyed by any provable falsity; enrichment of, still incomplete; expressive power of, as doom; Gödel numbering of; hope of completeness of; hope of consistency of; impossibility of gaining completeness by augmenting; notation of, exhibited; pointing at self is like video camera pointing at TV; proved incomplete by Gödel; as universal representational system

  PM strings, edible vs. inedible

  poems: found in the text; self-writing

  point of view: missing in physical activity; as transportable and modular

  pointers: in a mind, to other things; inwards-pointing; outwards-pointing

  Poland surviving as abstract landless entity

  Policansky, David

  political feelings, innate

  Pollock, Jackson, painting by

  Pomponnette, straying cat

  porcinal identity

  “pork” vs. pigs

  Porter, Cole

  portrait of someone else in one’s brain, grain size of

  Posh Shop Picketeers, The (Rosalyn Wadhead)

  pottery vs. pattern

  Poulenc, Francis

  powers in the Fibonacci sequence; powers in the wff numbers

  “preceded by itself in quote marks”

  precision, lack of, in language

  predictable macroscopic phenomena

  preludes and fugues

  Presley, Elvis

  pressure, as emergent phenomenon

  pressures collectively dictating pathway in life

  prim numbers; as apex of 46-story abstraction tower; infinitude of; mirroring provable formulas; recognized by Göru; sums of two; uncanny power of; unpredictability of; as valid subject of study in number theory

  primary location of being, blurriness of

  primary meaning of KG, see lower-level meaning

  primary self, associated with a given brain; unthreatened by coarse-grained rivals

  primary swirl, as personal gemma

  prime factorizations of integers

  prime mover (641)

  prime numbers; of form 4n + 1 vs. form 4n + 3gaps between; infinitude of; machine for detecting; sums of two; as sums of two squares

  Prince Hyppia

  Prince Hyppia: Math Dramatica (Y. Ted Enrustle)

  Princess Bloppia

  Principia Mathematica (Whitehead and Russell)hypothetical volumes devoted to wff numbers and prim numbers; as intrinsically vulnerable to self-reference; as invaded fortress; one page of; opening with self-reference; praised by Gödel; prickly notation of; as solid foundation for all of mathematics; its strength is its weakness; studying its own properties

  prisons, morality of

  privileged strange loop in brain

  probability theory, origin in gambling

  projectory, see episodic

  Prokofiev, Sergei; piano concerto #3; violin concerto #1

  “pro-lifer-ate”

  pronouns: as embodying default assumptions; as self-referential devices; used in text in unusual manner; see also indexicality

  pronoun conventions: as reflecting degree of souledness; as reflecting one’s beliefs about identity; as reinforcing naïve ideas of identity; in violation of naïve ideas of identity

  proof in geology

  proof in mathematics; assumed equivalence to truth; unclear nature of; vs. computer searches

  provable formulas of PM (theorems); always true

  Provable-KG Scenario; assumed; not believed by KG; shown wrong

  pseudo-memories as valid memories

  psychological continuity

  psychopaths, violent, as low-huneker beings

  pulsating patterns in video feedback

  puns, tested out

  purpleness, experience of

  Pushkin, Alexander

  pushovers, naïve (author and reader alike)

  putting on and taking off someone else’s style

  Q

  Q (the product of all prime numbers)

  Qéé Dzhii, numerologist in Prince Hyppia

  qualia, as ineffable, primordial experiences; toilets and; as usual sine qua non for consciousness

  Quandary, The

  quantum electrodynamics

  quantum-mechanical collisions as ultimate reality

  quantum mechanics, development of

  quarks

  Quine, Willard Van Orman

  Quine’s analogy for Gödel’s construction

  Quine’s Quasi-Quip and Quine’s Quip; yielding self-referential sentence

  quotation marks: analogous to taking Gödel numbers; proper use of; questionable use of; in self-referential sentences; shades of gray for

  R

  Racecar Power®, as optional

  Rachmaninoff, Sergei

  radar

  radicals

  rainbow, as metaphor for “I”-ness

  random glitches in mathematics

  randomness of physical world but not of math

  randomness of simm-level activity in careenium

  ranking of creatures’ “value”

  Rattner, Justin

  Ravel, Maurice

  raw sensation, see qualia, experience

  reachable vs. non-reachable integers

  Reagan, Ronald

  reality: blurriness of; as determined by perception; dubious, of where one is located; grounding of; of higher-level view of living organisms; of “I”, tacitly presumed by average person; levels of; macroscopic patterns as “realest” level of; of pixel patterns on screen; sorting-out of

  reasoning, mechanization of

  reasonless pattern in mathematics

  Reasons and Persons (Parfit)

  reasons behind patterns

  reception vs. perception

  recursive rules: with outputs always larger than inputs; with outputs possibly smaller than inputs

  recursively defined sets of formulas

  recursively defined sets of integers

  red and blue sensations, flipping of

  red spot in Exploratorium

  reductionism’s lack of respect for spatiotemporal boundaries

  reductionist view: of careenium; of dog traits; of gas; hopeless complexity of; of video feedback; see also boundaries

  Reductionist View (of Derek Parfit)

  reference, as always mediated by analogy; direct vs. indirect, as matter of degree

  reflexes vs. consciousness

  regrouping as strategy in pattern-hunting

  regularities in macroworld; in mathematics, as always having reasons

  relativity

  reliable macroscopic phenomena taken for granted

  religion, as cause for war

  remote events as causes

  repertoires of symbols; as determinant of size of self; in dogs; extensibility of, in human minds; in mosquitoes; and representational universality

  Replicator inside Teletransporter

  representational universality of human brains

  resonance frequency in audio feedback

  resonance in personality space with others

  resurrection of departed, in souls of living

  reverberant barking

  reverberant parking lot

  reverence: for Bach; for life

  rhyming prose

  rhythmic prose

  Richard, Jules

  riddles about the Capitalized Essence of Consciousness

  “right stuff ” vs. “wrong stuff ”: Searle’s refrain; as substrate of consciousness

  ripples: as
represented in symbols in brain; sent out and returning

  Roberts, Lamar

  robots: consciousness of; controlled by joysticks; engaged in collective honking orgy; location of body vs. location of “brain”; platoon of many clones, as all lifeless; transmitting perceptions to remote brain

  robot vehicles; honking at each other; souls of

  Rodgers, Richard

  roller coaster: confused with baseball game; in movie theater

  roman à clef

  romantic situations, analogy between

  Roosevelt, Eleanor

  rope, swinging, unconsciousness of

  Rosser, Kathleen

  rouge means “blue”

  Rovereto, Italy

  R2-D2 (robot)

  rubber-band brains

  ruby found in the Caspian Sea

  rules of inference; analogous to rules in recursive definitions; careful design of; ignoring all meaning; mirrored by computational rules; producing shorter output strings than input strings

  running despite pain

  running out of primes

  Russell, Bertrand: banishing self-reference; banning self-containing sets; blindsided by Gödel’s insights; conceding there is meaning in PM formulas; denying there is meaning in PM formulas; employing self-referential language; formalizing reasoning; as paranoiac paradoxophobe; repelled by self-reference; second-worst nightmare; seeing only one level of meaning for PM strings; seemingly unaware of self-referential sentences in Principia Mathematica; unaware of integers’ universality; as whiteheaded alien from Ukia; worst nightmare

  Russellian meaning of KG, see lower-level meaning

  S

  “s” (symbol in PM )

  Sabatini, Silvia (lap-loop person “B”)

  sacred cows, killing of

  sacred vs. profane; Schweitzer on

  Sadat, Anwar

  Sagan, Françoise

  Sallows, Lee

  Sanskrit

  Santa Claus, deconstructing of

  sardines, see herrings

  Sardinian pig roast

  saucy (non-prim) numbers; preferred to prim numbers by Qéé Dzhii; recognized by Göru

  saxophones and sassafras trees

  Scanner inside Teletransporter

  scarlet sardine

  Schank, Roger

  schism perceived between goal-lacking and goal-possessing entities

  Schrödinger, Erwin

  Schweitzer, Albert; Bach and; guns and; Günsbach and; as musician; rare compassion of; reverential style of, as Bach organist; on sacred vs. profane

  science-fiction thought experiments; as liberating

  Scientific American

  scientific viewpoint as correct but too complex

  Scriabin, Alexander

  Searle, John

 

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