Strange Loops

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead published Principea Mathematica – the most comprehensive outline of the axiomatic foundations of mathematics. Banished forever was to be mathematical falsehoods and ambiguity.

Just some 20-odd years later along came the Mathematician Kurt Gödel, who showed how the system could contain internal references to itself – dubbed Strange Loops. This strange property of a grammer to be self-referential has been used by numerous philosophers in attempts to understand that most complex and self-referential system: human consciousness.

Back in 1979 Douglas Hofstadter earned the Pulitzer Prize for his book 'Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid' where he explored these ideas in new and interesting ways. It has become a must read for every computer scientist and mathematician since.

So it was with anticipation that I picked up 'I Am A Strange Loop' – the current release of the mature Hofstadter. (GEB was published by a 31-year old just out of grad school). Dr. Hofstadter has spent his career researching artificial intelligence systems, and collaborated with the philosopher of the mind Daniel Dennet on numerous occasions as both men attempt to understand what makes us tick, and how that can be used to make better software.

Sadly, I was largely disappointed, as I Am A Strange Loop lacks the marvel and inventiveness of the earlier work. However, Hofstadter did broach one new idea that I find a little intriguing. Taken from the idea that a computer program can exist on multiple computers, Hofstadter theorizes that parts of our internal program, the bits and pieces of us, our memories and ideas, can (and do!) exist in more than one brain. As we interact and share ideas and stories, those ideas and stories come to exist in both of our minds, albeit at different fidelity. As I relate an experience to you, that experience becomes part of you, carried in your mind just as in mine, and vice verse. And, Hofstadter seems to be saying: Those cast off pieces extend our consciousness beyond our physical bodies.

Of course, my immediate opposition to Hofstadter's idea is that “Sure, others share parts of the same stories and ideas, but those parts cast off into their brains aren't important to me: They're not part of what is me, what make me conscious, what is that most important strange loop called 'I'! It is only the parts of the program running on my machinery that matter to me – those cast off parts are actually now parts of a system running elsewhere and contributing to a different 'I', which is no longer me.”

But, perhaps that isn't what Hofstadter is attempting to say after all. For he wrote this part of the book after the early and unexpected death of his wife, and appears to be searching for a means to convince himself that she isn't completely gone. That, more than mere memories, there is some of her remaining inside him, in a much more literal sense than is usually meant.

Intuitively, we've known that for a long time. There is another civilization that has the concepts of Sasha and Zumani – Sasha for those departed but for whom there remain people who knew them when they were alive: Literally, the living dead. One does not become zumani until all who have first-hand knowledge of you have also passed on. That we retain more than just memories, but some of another's ideas have become our own, some of their patterns have become our patterns, and that as long as we continue to use those patterns to define us, they aren't completely absent.

And so, in sort of a convoluted manner, Hofstadter has reminded us of what is possibly one of the greatest gifts of consciousness: The ability to remember.