I Am a Strange Loop (85 page)

self-reproduction, Gödelian mechanisms of

self-stabilizing structures

self-symbol: accreting over time; of careenium; coarse-grained copies of, in others; of dog; initial emptiness of; locking-in of; seen as strange loop, reasons for; self-delusions in

self-undermining words and phrases

Sellers, Peter

“semantic juice”, as underwriting meaning and “aboutness”

semantics: and machinery; possession of, as criterial for consciousness; quibbling over as serious; transplantable to other brains

semiclassical view: of quantum phenomena; of self and soul

sense of humor as brain structure

sensual experiences, as basis for consciousness

sentences that inventory each other

serial numbers, as determining human identity

Seuss, Dr.

Seven Year Itch, The

1729, as interesting number

72900 (code number for “0=0”)

777,777, short descriptions of

sewing machines, as indistinguishable zombies

sex of child, determined by microscopic factors

sexist language and sexist thinking; exemplified

sexuality: as bedrock cause for humans; in Twinwirld

shades of gray: of consciousness; for mentalistic verbs; for perception; in personality space; for quotation marks; for reality; for souledness; for where one is

Shahn, Ben

Shakespeare, William

shared goals leading to shared identity

shared yearnings

Shell sign, reality of top side of

shopping cart, reliability of

shorthands, as necessary for survival

Shostakovich, Dmitri

shout into chasm

Shultz, Charles

Siamese Twinwirld

signals, as triggering symbols

signature done via hard-wired motor control
vs.
via linguistic instructions

Siksek, Samir

simballic “logic”

simmballs (in careenium); imbued with meaning

simms (“small interacting magnetic marbles”); as blurry soup

simms
vs.
simmballs

simplification as human glory

simultaneous presence in multiple places

sincere belief as experienced by a zombie

singing in unison

singletons and pairs in sequence of primes

62, as boring integer

641, primality of, as cause; role of, in history of mathematics

skeptics, voice of

skiing: unpredictability of; vacation in California

Skinnner, B. F., on self-referential sentences

skivaganzas

slaughterhouse, tour of

slavery

sleazeball, as familiar but blurry pattern

slider on wire determining identity

sliding scale: of consciousness; of
élan mental
; of symbol repertoire

slingshots

slippery slope of teleological language

slow
vs.
fast: controlling of bodies by brains; feeding of brains by perceptual systems;

Sluggo, daydreaming about himself

smallest uninteresting integer

“small-souled men”

small-souled
vs.
large-souled beings

smiling like Hopalong Cassidy

snippets of other people’s talk and inner worlds

“snow”, elusiveness of concept

“s0 + s0 = ss0”

“soap digest rack” explained in Sanskrit

“soap opera”: causality attached to the concept of; as deeply nested concept; as very real pattern

soaring up to into the sky

soaring up to into this guy

soccer ball, as goal-seeker

social hierarchies, position in, in self-symbol

Socrates, as dialogue character

software beings inside us

soil of novels and of souls

Solar System, vagueness of the notion

solid-state physics

Sommerfeld, Arnold

“Song of Myself ” (Whitman)

Sophie’s Choice

soul: and ability to think; architecture of; as dot located on a line; as efficient shorthand; expressed on face; of flea; floating up into heaven; higher-level, forged in marriage; as illusion; lacking in animals, dogma of; lacking in women, dogma of; likened to butterfly swarms; living in brains of other souls; of mosquito; of mouse; as pattern; as region along a line; serial number of; sizes of; slow growth of; sudden extinction of; traditional immortality of; in Twinwirld; value of; as wispy aura

soul merger: speculated about before Carol’s death; wedding ceremony as

soular corona

soular eclipse

souledness: correlation with musical taste; degrees of; increasing with age; not limited to 100 hunekers

soulless creatures

souls: deep
vs.
shallow alignment of; hierarchy of values of

soul-shards, survival of

soul-soil

sound transmission, predictability of

soup can in cart, reliability of behavior of

speaking in unison

spectrum of mentalistic verbs

speech, unpredictability of one’s own

sperms

Sperry, Roger

splashtacular scuba specials

splits in oneself (or in one self ) as suggesting presence of two or more selves

spotting the gist

spouse, death of, as trauma

spying on dog in kennel via webcam

squabbles among subselves for dominance in brain

squares; sums of two

squirting chemicals, in brain

“ss0 + ss0 = sssss0”, as conceivable
PM
theorem

stable volume of audio feedback

Stanford Elementary School

Stanford University

Stanley (robot vehicle); claimed to be “thinking”; counterfactual version of; episodic memory of; episodic projectory of; episodic subjunctory of; hopes and fears of; irrelevance of location of computer; self-image of; supposedly having “algorithmic equivalent of self-awareness”; what is lacking for an “I” to exist in it

Star Wars

statistical mechanics

statistical mentalics

statistical robustness of coin flips

steam-engine governor

steering wheels, reliability of

Stephen, the stoning of

sticking a formula’s Gödel number inside the formula itself

storytelling technique, efficacy of

strange loop: as core of “I”-ness; definition of; enhanced by
élan mental
; essence of; existence of; flavorings of; Gödel’s discovery of; growth of; illusory, in
Drawing Hands
; lack of, in mosquito; less than one per neonate brain; as level-crossing feedback loop; many per brain; nonphysicality of; one per brain; one privileged one, per brain; as paradoxical; in
Principia Mathematica
; seeming lack of identity; of selfhood, as trap; small size, in dog; as soul-less; as ungraspably elusive; “vanilla”; various “sizes” of; and video feedback

Strange Loops #641 and #642: dialogue between; names of; rift between

strangeness (of loops), essence of

strength of
PM
is its doom

strings of symbols; edible
vs.
inedible

strong force in physics

stuff of consciousness;
see also
feelium,
élan mental

subjectless formula fragment by Gödel

subjectless sentence fragments

subjunctive replays of episodes

subjunctory,
see
episodic

subselves;
see also
“i”

substrate of thought: improbability of a mind postulating it; invisibility of; irrelevance of details of

subsymbolic frenzy, imperceptibility of

subwoofers producing rumbles

“suffer along with”, meaning of “compassion”

suffrage inside brain, at desire level

Sullivan, Maxine

sunflowers as desire-possessing systems

Super-PM,
just as incomplete as
PM

super-prim numbers

Suppes, Patrick C.

survival: double; as function of transportability of one’s psychic point of view; as goal of living beings; key role of perception in; partial, in other brains; shades of gray in; via teleported clones

SUV’s

swing set; reliability of; symbol for

Swingle Singers

swirliness, transportability of, from one brain to another

switches thrown to change personality

syllable counting: in descriptions of integers; vagueness of the notion

symbol manipulation: by mathematicians; by
PM

symbolic logic

symbolic nature of simmballs

symbols in brain: analogous to books in library; as by-product of evolution; dance of; defined; direct perceivability of; of dogs; hierarchical nesting of; of humans; “I” as most complex of all; joint activation of; of mosquitoes; perceived by other symbols; poofing out of existence; representing other people; triggering of, by episodes; triggering of, by signals; typical examples of; unlimited repertoire of, in humans

symbols on pages of
Principia Mathematica
forming patterns

sympathetic pleasure

synapses

synchrony: of Pomponnette and Aurélie; of prim numbers and
PM
theorems; of simmballs and outer world

synonymy of “I”, “self ”, “soul”, “consciousness”, “light on”, “first-person viewpoint”, “interiority”, etc.

T

tackiness, as familiar but blurry pattern

tactile illusion: as hint of wrongness of one-self view; of marble in envelope box,
see
Epi, marble

tail wagging dog

tall tale

tallness
vs.
souledness

Taoism;
see also
Zen

Tarski, Alfred

Tarzan and Jane

Tati, Jacques

“teetering bulb of dread and dream” (Edson)

Teleclones Mark IV and Mark V

teleological language: irresistible slide towards, in opaque systems; as shorthand

telephone menu tree, droning voices in

telephonic telepresence

teleportation; goggles giving impression of; to Mars; of thought experiment; to Venus

telepresence; via nose-mounted TV cameras; via novel-reading

Teletransporters (Parfit)

television salesperson

temperature: as cause; as emergent

tennis-playing

Tesler, Larry

“the present work”, “the present chapter”

theorems: as bottom lines of formal derivations; first, second (etc.) generations of; as meaningful patterns; as meaningless patterns; mirrored by prim numbers

theory of computation

theory of sets

theory of types; self-referentiality of chapter introducing

therapy sessions for bereaved spouses

thermodynamics
vs.
statistical mechanics

thermostats

thinking: ; with another’s brain; essence of; as synonym of consciousness

thinkodynamics
vs.
statistical mentalics

thirst: as collective pattern of many beer cans; as one beer can popping up

“This formula is not provable”

“This formula is provable”

“this sentence”, avoidance of indexical phrase

“This sentence is false”

“thit sentence”

Thomas, Dylan

“thou” addressed to married couple

thought: basic unit of; as dance of simmballs; as dance of symbols; as mere set of habits; as prime mover in brain

thought experiments: parameters tweaked in; teleported across Atlantic

thoughtmill churned by simms

“three three threes”

threshold of complexity: for computational universality; for representational universality

throwaway analogies, random examples of: between Buzzaround Betty and Hopalong Cassidy; between Cagey and Qéé Dzhii; between car buyers and heart surgeons; between consciousness and a power moonroof; between deconstructing the “I” and deconstructing Santa Claus; between Doug/Carol and a school of fish; between etymology and an X-ray; between exploration of video feedback and sea voyage; between form–content interplay and tail wagging dog; between John Searle and Dylan Thomas; between lack of imagery and lack of oxygen; between people and grasshoppers; between
Principia Mathematica
and Newton’s
Principia
; between reading Euclid’s proof and tasting chocolate; between reading “accessible” version of proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem and ordering “Indian hot”; between reverberant barking and a chain reaction; between Roger Sperry and Hopalong Cassidy; between Russell and God; between strange loop of “I”-ness and pearl necklace; between this book and a salad; between tired muscles and soft recruits; between top and bottom of Shell sign; between TV screen and leaf pile; between Twinwirld and Twinnwirrld; between will’s constancy and a gyroscope

throwing-away of information

time-lapse photography

Tinkertoys as substrate for thinking

Titanic
baby found floating in life raft

titles of sections in
Reasons and Persons
chapter

toilet paper and pebbles as substrate for thinking

toilets, awareness level of

tomatoes as soulless

Tomonaga, Sin-Itiro

“too marbelous for words”

tornado cell, opposing caged-bird metaphor

tower of increasingly abstract definitions

toy guns, attempted banishment of

traffic jam, global explanation for

trains: identity of; who
vs.
that

transplanting: a novel to another soil; a soul to another soil

transportability, differential, of layers of a self

triggering of symbols in brain

Treisman, Anne

Trenet, Charles

Trento, Italy

Trojan horse, Gödel’s

true statements: Gödel numbers of; logicians’ favorite examples

trustability of sources of information

Truth and Denotation
(Martin)

truth: as inexpressible notion using
PM
notation; preservation of, via rules of inference; presumed to be equivalent to provability in
PM
; and unprovability perversely entailing each other