I Am a Strange Loop (81 page)

exponential explosions

extensible category system of humans; and representational universality; yielding consciousness

extra bonus feature of consciousness

extra-physical nature of consciousness

F

F
numbers;
see also
Fibonacci

fading afterglow of a soul

failures, perception of one’s own

faith in one’s own thought processes

falafel, savored by two brains

Falen, James

falsity in mathematics, assumed equivalent to lacking proof

Fauconnier, Gilles

Fauré, Gabriel

fear: of feedback loops; of self-reference; of self-representation in art

feedback loops; and central goals of living creatures; content-free; and exponential growth; as germ of consciousness; in growth of human self-symbol; as instinctive taboo; irrelevant to hereness, for SL #642; level-crossing;
see also
strange loops

feeding a formula its own Gödel number

feeling one is elsewhere

feeling posited to be independent of physics

feeling
vs.
nonfeeling machines

feelium, as stuff of experience and sensation

Feigen, George

Femme du boulanger, La
(Pagnol), indirect meanings carried by analogy in

Fermat, Pierre de

Fermat’s Last Theorem, proof of

fetus having no soul

Fibonacci (Leonardo di Pisa)

Fibonacci numbers; perfect mutual avoidance with powers

fidelity of copy of another’s interiority

Fields, W. C.

fine-grained
vs.
coarse-grained loops

first-person
vs.
third-person view of “I”;
see also
The Hard Problem

first-person writing style

fish, respect for life of

flap loop; photo of

flexibility, maximal, of machines

flip side of Mathematician’s Credo

flipping-around of perceptual system

flirting with infinity

float-ball in flush toilet

fluid pointers

flush-toilet fill mechanism

food: for people in virtual environments; for virtual creatures

fooled by the realism of
Drawing Hands

football: sensation swapped with baseball sensation; on television

forces: in the brain; in physics;
vs.
desires

forest
vs.
trees

form–content interplay

formula fragment in
PM

43 and 49, as uninteresting integers

foundations of mathematics, quest for stable

fractalic gestalts of video feedback

frames as brain structures

Frank, Anne

Franklin, Benjamin

free will: of machine; as opposed to will; overridden by itself

Free Willie

Frege, Gottlob

French people having flipped color qualia

French translation: of Bach aria words; of “my leg is asleep”

Freud, Sigmund

friends: constituting threshold for consciousness; giving rise to “I”; personal identity of; self-inventorying sentences as; sharing of joys and pains of

Frucht, William

frustration of one’s will

funerals, purpose of

funneling of complex input into few symbols

fusion, psychic: of Chaplin twins; of halves in Twinwirld; of husband and wife; of souls, as inevitable consequence of long-term intimate sharing

G

g
(Gödel number of Gödel’s formula); bypassing of; code number of unpennable line in play

“
g
is not prim”;
see also
KG

galaxies: colliding in cyberspace; colliding in space; emerging from video feedback

Galileo Galilei

Galois, Évariste, as radical

Gandhi, (Mahatma) Mohandas

gargantuan integers

gases, behavior of

gemstones found in the Caspian Sea

generosity, as bedrock cause for humans

genes: as abstract entities; human, as source of potential strange loop; as patterns copied in different organisms; as physical entities; as remote from real life

genetic code

Gershwin, George

Giant Electronic Brain

gleb/knurk fence;
see also
knurking

Glosspan, Aunt (in “Pig”)

Glover, Henry

glue: on dollops of Consciousness; on envelopes as source of Epi

gluons

gluttony
vs.
weight-watching

goal-lacking and goal-possessing entities, perceived schism between

goal-orientedness of systems, blurriness of

goals of living creatures

goals, shared

God: elusiveness of mathematical truth and; not a player of dice; reality of

Göd

Gödel, Escher, Bach
: central message of; dialogues in; linking author with Bach; typesetting of; video feedback photos in; writing of

Gödel, Kurt; arithmetizes
PM
; believer in
PM
’s consistency; birthyear of; as black belt; bypasses indexicality; code for
PM
symbols and formulas; concocts self-referential statement in
PM
; discovery of strange loop by; “God” in name of; growing up in Brünn; 1931 article of; as re-analyzer of what meaning is; respect for power of
PM
; sees analogy between Fibonacci numbers and
PM
theorems; sees causal potency of meaning of strings; sees representational richness of whole numbers; umlaut in name of; as young mathematician

Gödel numbering; freedom in; revealing secondary meaning of Imp

Gödel rays

Gödelian formulas, infinitude of

Gödelian swirl; ease of transportability; isomorphism of any two, at coarse-grained level; pointers in;
see also
strange loop

Gödel’s formula KG: condensability of; described through abbreviations; downward causality and; hiddenness of higher-level view of; high-level and low-level meanings of; higher-level view fantasized as being obvious; inconceivable length of; lack of indexicals in; as repugnant to Bertrand Russell; translated with the indexical pronoun “I”; truth of; unprovability of

Gödel’s formula KH, for
Super-PM

Gödel’s incompleteness theorem: as proven by Chaitin; as proven by Gödel

Gödel’s Proof
(Nagel and Newman)

Gödel’s strange loop: as inevitable as video feedback; as prototype for “I”-ness

Gödel–Turing threshold for universality

“God’s-eye point of view”

Goldbach Conjecture; decided by Göru

Golden Rule

Goldsmith, John

good and bad, sense of, in growing self

Göru: falling short of hopes; machine for solving all mathematical problems; machine for telling prims from non-prims; non-realizability of

Gott ist unsre Zu versicht
(Bach); counterfactual extension of

Gould, Glenn

gradations of consciousness

Graham’s constant

graininess: in representations of others; in video loops

grandmother cells

grand-music neuron

grass and souls

grasshopper rescued

gravitation

grazing of paradox

Greater Metropolitan You

“great soul” as hidden meaning of “magnanimous” and of “Mahatma”

green button, fear of pushing

Greg and Karen, Twinwirld couple

Greg’l and Greg’r

griffins, uncertain reality of

“grocery store checkout stand”: causality attached to the concept of; as nested concept; vignette involving

grocery stores’ meat displays

growth rules, recursive, defining sequences of numbers

growth rules, typographical, for strings in
PM

guinea pigs sacrificed for science

gulf between truth and provability

Gunkel, Pat

guns fashioned from sandwiches

Guru, machine that tells primes from non-primes

Gutman, Hattie

Gutman, Kellie

H

h
(Gödel number of Gödel’s formula KH)

“
h
is not a super-prim number”

H1 (robot vehicle)

halflings in Twinwirld

hallucination hallucinated by hallucination

halo: counterfactual, around personal identity; of each soul; of national souls

halves, left and right, in Twinwirld

hammerhead shark, location of

hands-in-water experiment

hangnails, reality of one’s own

hardness and roundness of Epi

Hard Problem, The;
see also
first-person

hardware
vs.
patterns

“hard-wiring”: of hemispheric links; hypothetically tweaked; of motor control as source of identity; of perceptual hardware as source of identity

Hastorf, Albert H.

“he”, as hyped pronoun for robot vehicle

heart: architecture of; evolution of; summarizable as “a pump”

Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The
(McCullers)

heart-shaped bread and heart on collar, analogy between

heat-seeking missile

“heavenly body”, vagueness of the term

hedge maze of life

Heisenberg, Werner

heliocentrism
vs.
geocentrism

hemisphere, cerebral, as site of a half-self

hemoglobin molecules, number of in body

Henkin, Leon

heredity studied at abstract before physical level

“hereness”, mystery of, for SL #642; as posed by Derek Parfit and Daniel Dennett

Herman, Robert

herrings: blue; red;
see also
humpback

hierarchy: of forces in brain; of living creatures; of recursive functions defined by Gödel; of souledness

higher-level logic, appeal of, to brains

higher-level meaning: downward causality and;of Gödel’s formula; hiddenness of, for KG; of Imp; obviousness of, for brains; of
PM
strings, as read by Klüdgerot; of Prince Hyppia’s outburst

higher-level soul, created in marriage

high-level view: of brain activity; of careenium; of dog genetics; of domino chainium; eclipsing low-level view; of Gödel’s formula; indispensability of; of life in general; of pixel patterns on TV screen; of traffic jam; of video feedback

Hilbert, David

Hilbert program

“hive spirit”

Hofstadter, Carol Ann Brush: being Doug; bon mots by; dubious transportability of deepest pointers inside; dying of brain tumor; eye-to-eye with Doug re children; gaze similar to Doug’s; as Indian-dinner giver; interiority of, survival of; love for Prokofiev first violin concerto; memorial service for; memories belonging to, copied inside Doug; personal losses of, as felt by Doug; physical suffering of, shared by Doug; as sharable pattern; soul-shards, survival of, in Doug; thinking with Doug’s brain; thought of in present tense after death; videotapes, as disorienting; washing dishes and replaying dinner party with Doug

Hofstadter, Daniel; as catalyst to soul merger of parents; internalizing friends’ mannerisms; spotting reverberant parking lot from air; wearing nose-mounted TV camera

Hofstadter, Douglas: arranging memorial service; assuming Gödel is a male; baffled by Bartók; befriending Nagel family; being on both Mars and Venus; being Carol; belief in logic as key to human mind; column in
Scientific American
; compiling own index; confusing own memories with those of a friend; consciousness cone of; contradictions in head; copycatting many people; counterfactual versions of; deprived of geometry; different person as time passes; disavowing “meta” motto; driven by form; eating chicken and fish; enraptured by Elvis; exploring number theory; eye-to-eye with Carol re children; fainting in physiology lab; fascination with Gödel; fascination with minds and brains; fascination with self-reference; fear of videotapes of Carol; feeling Carol’s losses; feeling physical suffering of wife; feeling self behind Carol’s eyes; first hearing Chopin; gaze similar to that of Carol; grappling with Carol’s death; growing by accretion; hesitant to close video loop; hitting abstraction ceiling; horsies-and-doggies style; hypothetically buckling under intense pressures of grief; imagining soul as wisp; intoxicated with Bach fugues; intrigued by three threes; jilted; linking own brain with zombie’s; looking at daughter Monica “for Carol”, for “Old-Doug”, for “Old-Carol”; losing faith in logic as key to human mind; love for Chopin and Bach; love for Prokofiev first violin concerto; as meat-eater; mini-samaritanism of; musical taste; as naïve as young careenium; physics background; picking at hangnail; playing piano; programming computer to write sentences; pronoun choices by; rambling on a bit too long; reacting to mother’s grief; reification of, in own and others’ brains; repudiating Parfit’s ideas; running; sadness increasing with age; savoring falafel eaten by sister; seeing sister’s expressions on own face; seeing souls as swirls of haze; sharing wife’s joys; shattered by Carol’s death; shooting elephants and rhinos with gusto; sitting on own lap; slipping back and forth between “classical” and “modern” views of soul; smiling like Hopalong Cassidy; souledness cone of; as specialist in thinking about thinking; speculating about soul mergers; studying languages; swallowing Chinese Room whole; taunted by advanced tomes on logic; teaching symbolic logic to sixth-graders; thrilled by two twos; throwing switches to tamper with own identity; troubled by readings about brains; troubles with mathematics; true to long-term beliefs; vegetarian leanings; vegetarianism oscillations; washing dishes and replaying dinner party with Carol; watching football on TV; wondering what it would be like; work in cognitive science; working for United Farm Workers; writing first dialogue

Hofstadter, Laura; eating falafel; expressions of, on brother’s face; reacting to photo of father; as sixth-grade student of symbolic logic; vegetarian leanings of

Hofstadter, Molly

Hofstadter, Monica; as catalyst to soul merger of parents; internalizing friends’ mannerisms; third birthday of; wearing nose-mounted TV camera