I Am a Strange Loop (83 page)

“lower” animals,
see
hierarchy

lower-level events,
see
substrate

lower-level meaning of Gödel’s formula; ignoring of

low-level view of brains

low notes gliding into rumbles

low-resolution copies,
see
fidelity

Lucas,
see
Natalie

Lucy (“Peanuts”)

M

Machine Q
vs.
Machine Z

machines: with beliefs about free will; confused; conscious; creative; dedicated; downloading of; emulating other machines; with linguistic capacity; as necessarily unconscious; with opinions; reading and interpreting description of own structure; with souls; universal; who think
vs.
that think

Machines Who Think
(McCorduck)

Macintosh, emulating Alienware machine

MacLaine, Shirley

macroscopic boundaries, irrelevant to particles

macroscopic forces as patterns

Madurodam

Magellan, Ferdinand

magic genie for all mathematical questions

magic square, ill-definedness of the notion

magical realism

magical thinking connected with “I”-ness

“magical”
vs.
“ordinary” entities

magnanimity; etymology of the word

“Mahatma”, etymology of

“main brain” of a given soul

Malagasy language, presumed opacity of

Mallory, George

Malraux, André

mammals as dividing line for food

Mandelbrot, Benoit

Mann, Lois

Mantle, Mickey

mapping: of colors to color sensations; at core of life; giving rise to meaning; of
PM
patterns into the world of numbers

“marbelous”, too much for words

marble, illusory, in envelope box;
see also
Epi

Margolin, Janet

marital bond, tightness of

Marot, Clément

marriage: of Carol and Doug; as soul merger; as third patient in counseling for a couple

Married People: Staying Together in the Age of Divorce
(Klagsbrun)

Mars, teleportation to

Martin, Mary

Martin, Richard M.

Marx, Groucho

matheism

mathematical causality

mathematical community, blurriness of

mathematical reasoning unified with logic

mathematicians: as coffee-to-theorem convertors; as conjecture-to-theorem convertors; as cousins of Einstein; as pattern-seekers; perseverance of; as reason-seekers

Mathematician’s Credo; contradicted by Gödel’s formula; empirical confirmation of; flip side of; presumably mechanized in
PM

mathematics: blurry borders of the discipline; graduate school in; modeling itself; reasoning about itself; as study of patterns

Maxwell, James Clerk

maze,
see
hedge maze

McCorduck, Pamela

McCullers, Carson

McMahon, Miss (first-grade teacher)

meaning: as always mediated by mappings/analogies; in arbitrary substrates; as by-product of evolution of brains; as cause; as consequence of reliable alignment; as criterial for “I”-ness; emerging upon zooming-out; made from meaningless constituents; molecular, mediated by mapping; in music; unintended by author

meaningless marks on paper

meaninglessness: alleged, of self-reference; of low-level brain activity; of
PM
symbols and strings

meat: different types, mixed; perception of;
see also
“It Ain’t”

meat-eating

mechanical symbol-shunting rules imbuing symbols with meanings

mechanization of reasoning

medical care, unequal distribution of

medium
vs.
message

“mega inconsistency”,
see
omega-inconsistency

members
vs.
non-members of number clubs

memes

memories of a loved one: coarse-grained copies in oneself; as infinitesimal soul-shards

memory: episodic; in reverberant barking; short-term and long-term; in video reverberation

memory organization packets

me-ness,
see
hereness, “Where am I ?”

Mendelssohn, Felix

mental spaces

mentalistic notions
vs.
physical substrate

metallic strip in Video Voyage I

“Metamagical Themas” column

metamathematics

metaphor salad

meteorites, absorption of, as metaphor for accretion of self

metric between minds

Michigan, University of

micro-events: invisibility of, in brain; irrelevance of

“microgödelinos”

microscope examining own lenses

“might makes right” as moral principle

Mignotte, Maurice

milk-pouring, predictability of

mind and matter, chasm between

mind–body problem for tomatoes

Mind’s I, The
(Hofstadter and Dennett)

minerals, emergent properties of

mini-samaritanism

Minsky, Marvin

mirage of consciousness

mirrors mirroring mirrors

missing a plane, memory of

Mitchell, Melanie

mixed metaphors: for author’s plight; for Gödel’s construction

modus ponens

modus tollendo tollens

molecular biology reduced to physics

Molecular Gods: How Molecules Determine Our Behavior

molecules: existence of; irrelevance of; life stories of; submissive to desires;
vs.
thoughts; virtual, in computers

Monet, Claude

Monroe, Marilyn

moonroof, power, as distinct from consciousness

Moravec, Hans

morphing between two people

mortality, one’s own

Morton Salt, (blocked) infinite regress on label of

mosaic portrait of another person’s essence

Moser, David: admiration for Carol Hofstadter; brilliant wit of; grousing about lousy hosts; likened to devil incarnate

mosquitoes; complexity of brains of; equally conscious as humans; experience of blood of; experience of purpleness of; friendlessness; having no conscience, mercy, or pity; “I”-ness of; likened to flush toilets; likened to heat-seeking missiles; likened to thermostats; nondistributedness of; not deserving of rescue; qualia and; soullessness of; as swattable; symbols in

Mother Teresa

motorcycle roar, experience of

Moulin, Jean

mountaineers’ view of scalability of peaks

Muldaur, Maria

multiple “I” ’s in one head

multiple personalities

multiple simultaneous locations of self

music as cause for neuron (not) firing

music boxes, dedicated and universal

musical meaning, as outcome of patterns

musical styles, contrast between

musical taste (likes and dislikes) as deep aspect of human soul

mutual-avoidance dance of powers and Fibonacci numbers

mutual control and mutual perceptions lead to blur of identity

mutual inaccessibility of first-person cores

“my”: as concept of dog; as concept of human

“my brain”, meaning of

My Brother’s Place

myopic view: of domino chainium; of traffic jam

myself
vs.
others;
see also
hereness

mysteriousness of video reverberation

N

Nabel, Roy and Bruce, twinns

Nagel, Alexander (“Sandy”)

Nagel, Ernest

Nagel, Thomas

naïve view of self, as analogous to Newtonian physics

names of expressions

naming conventions as reinforcing naïve ideas of identity

Napoleon

Natalie and Lucas, Twinwirld twildren

needle in groove, timing of

neither fish nor fowl

Nemo, Captain

nesting of concepts

Nether Wallop

Neumann, John von

neural loop in brain

neurology, bypassing of

neurons; as wrong level of brain at which to seek consciousness

neuroscientists’ view of brains and “I”;
see also
Sperry

Nevada desert as testbed for robot vehicles

Newman, James R.

Newtonian physics, as analogous to naïve view of self

Nicole, prospective graduate student

Night at the Opera, A

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