Book Freak 161: I Am a Strange Loop

A thought-provoking exploration of the nature of consciousness that will leave you viewing your own mind in a new light

Hi Book Freaks! I read I Am a Strange Loop in December 2019–January 2020 while I was in Singapore. Jet lag-induced insomnia is a great way to catch up on reading.

Book Freak is free, but if you like it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

You may have heard of Hofstadter's Law — "It always takes longer than you think it will take, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."

The law's creator, Douglas Hofstadter, has a lifelong fascination with anything self-referential, such as Hofstadter's Law. He's written many books that blend logic, math, and psychology, and at their core, they are about the weird and wonderful world of self-reference. I've read most of his books, and they are tough-going at times for me, but I think Hofstadter believes that consciousness is a multi-level circuit that interacts with itself in a surprising way.

Here’s how a strange loop works

• There's a low level of processes happening (like neurons firing in a brain).

• At one level up, an abstract pattern, or code, is created that represents and describes those low-level processes.

• At an even higher level, that abstract pattern gets treated as a thing itself and reacted to.

• And then that higher-level reaction to the abstract pattern can loop back down and influence the original low-level concrete processes that the pattern describes.

So you have this "strange" circular loop, where representations of a process feed back and shape the process they represent.

Hofstadter sees human consciousness arising from strange looping interaction between levels — where abstract codes in our brain can loop back and subjectively experience themselves as the metaphorical "I," even influencing the brain's behavior.

In Hofstadter's view, strange loops provide a mechanism for resolving the paradox of free will. From the first-person perspective, inside a strange loop, the "I" feels like a subjective conscious entity that can somehow disobey low-level physical laws to exert its "will" and make choices. But from an external view, no laws are violated — the choices of the "I" still ultimately result from the physical processes. But the looping levels create the introspective illusion of free will. Strange loops provide a way to have subjective experience and top-down "free" will emerging from and influencing the bottom-up processes of physics and neural activity.

Here are four important ideas worth highlighting from I Am a Strange Loop:

The concept of a "strange loop"

Hofstadter introduces this key idea of a self-referential feedback loop between different levels of abstraction as the core mechanism underlying our sense of conscious selfhood. Our "I" arises from symbols in our brain referring to and impacting the neural processes that give rise to those very symbols.

Consciousness as a mirage

Our felt experience of consciousness is akin to a mirage — it seems utterly real and substantial, but is actually an ephemeral product arising from the chaotic physics of the brain, with no concretely existing essence or locatable source. The strange loop of self-reference, in Hofstadter's view, is what gives rise to this compelling illusion of a concrete, unified consciousness.

Symbolic patterns don't just describe - they also prescribe

High-level abstract patterns and symbols in cognition can influence the lower-level processes that produce them, violating our normal ideas of causality flowing from the bottom up.

The multiplicity of "I"s

Our notion of a unified, singular self or soul is an illusion. Hofstadter proposes there may be multiple "strange loops" or "selves" of varying strengths co-existing within one mind/brain.

It's worth noting that while Hofstadter's ideas can be challenging, his writing style is playful and engaging. Reading his work is intellectually stimulating and also uplifting.

---

Unclassifieds

Buy a Book Freak Unclassified ad for $50 and reach 12,600 readers!

---

I use a fantastic app called Reader, the first read-it-later / newsletter / RSS-reading / web-highlighting app for power readers. Save everything to one place, highlight like a pro, and replace several apps with Reader. Book Freak readers can try it free for 60 days.

---

The Magnet is Book Freak editor Mark Frauenfelder’s newsletter of curiosities across space and time. Subscribe here.

---

Setapp is a hand-picked collection of quality software, packed with prime apps. There’s no store — just a folder on the Mac, and no hidden costs — just a flat monthly fee. It’s simple, and users love it. Try it here!

---

Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We run the Cool Tools website, a video reviews YouTube channel, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, What’s in my NOW?, and Recomendo. You can also support our work by becoming a patron via Patreon.