I Am a Strange Loop

What will happen, however, when systems A and B are gradually brought close enough together to begin interacting with each other? Camera A will then see not only screen A but also screen B, and so loop B will enter into the content of loop A (and vice versa).

Let’s assume, as would seem natural, that camera A is closer to screen A than it is to screen B (and vice versa). Then loop A will take up more space on screen A than does loop B, meaning more pixels, and so loop A will be reproduced with higher fidelity on screen A. Loop A will be large and fine-grained, loop B will be small and coarse-grained. But that’s only on screen A. On screen B, everything is reversed: loop B will be larger and finer-grained, while loop A will be smaller and of coarser grain. The last thing I want to remind you of before we go on to a new paragraph is that now loop A, although it’s still called just “A”, nonetheless involves loop B as well (and vice versa); each of these two loops now plays a role in defining the other one, though loop A plays a larger role in its own definition than does loop B (and vice versa).

We now have a metaphor for two individuals, A and B, each of whom has their own personal identity (i.e., their own private strange loop) — and yet part of that private identity is made out of, and is thus dependent upon, the private identity of the other individual. Furthermore, the more faithful the image of each screen on the other one, the more the “private” identities of the two loops are intertwined, and the more they start to be fused, blurred, and even, to coin a word, undisentanglable from each other.

At this point, even though we are being guided solely by a very curious technological metaphor, I believe we are drawing slowly closer to an understanding of what genuine human identity is all about. In fact, how could anyone imagine that it would be possible to gain deep insight into the mystery of human identity without eventually running up against some sort of unfamiliar abstract structures? Sigmund Freud posited egos, ids, and superegos, and there may well exist some such abstractions inside the architecture of a human soul (perhaps not exactly those three, but patterns of that ilk). We humans are so different from other natural phenomena, even from most other types of living beings, that we should expect that in order to get a glimpse into what we truly are, we would have to look in very unexpected places. Although my strange loops are obviously very different from Freud’s notions, there is a certain similarity of spirit. Both views of what a self is involve abstract patterns that are extremely remote from the biological substrate they inhabit — so remote, in fact, that the specifics of the substrate would seem mostly irrelevant.

One Privileged Loop inside our Skull

Suppose some future television technology managed to eliminate the graininess of cameras and screens, so that all images were flawless at all scales. Such a fanciful scenario would then invalidate the argument, given above, that A’s representation of B’s loop, since it uses fewer pixels, is less faithful than that of its own loop. Now A has a perfect representation of B’s loop on its screen, and vice versa. So what makes A different from B? Perhaps they are now indistinguishable?

Well, no. There is still a fundamental difference between A and B, even though each represents the other perfectly. The difference is that camera A is feeding its image directly to screen A (and not screen B), while camera B is directly feeding screen B (and not screen A). Thus, if camera A tilts or zooms in, then the entire image on screen A follows suit and also tilts or grows larger, whereas the image on screen B stays put. (To be sure, the nested image of screen A on screen B will tilt or grow, all the way down the line of ever-more-nested images — but the orientation and size of the top-level screen in system B will remain unchanged, while those of the top-level screen in system A will be directly affected by what camera A does.)

The point of this variation was to make clear that distinct identities still exist even in a situation with profoundly intertwined loops, because the perceptual hardware of a given system directly feeds only that system. It may have indirect effects on all sorts of other systems, and those effects may even be very important, but any perceptual hardware is associated first and foremost with the system into which it feeds directly (or with which it is “hard-wired”, in today’s blur of computational and neurological jargon).