Strangeness
The "strangeness" of a strange loop comes from our way of perception, because we categorize our input in a small number of 'symbols' (by which Hofstadter means groups of neurons standing for one thing in the outside world). So the difference between the video-feedback loop and our strange loops, our "I"s, is that while the former converts light to the same pattern on a screen, the latter categorizes a pattern and outputs its essence, so that as we get closer and closer to our essence, we get further down our strange loop (according to Hofstadter's book 'I am a Strange Loop').
Read more about this topic: Strange Loop
Famous quotes containing the word strangeness:
“But here’s a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world. Expecting more novelty than there is, more greatness than there is, and more strangeness than there is, we imagine ourselves masters of a plastic universe. But a world we can shape to our will ... is a shapeless world.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“I wish more and more that health were studied half as much as disease is. Why, with all the endowment of research against cancer is no study made of those who are free from cancer? Why not inquire what foods they eat, what habits of body and mind they cultivate? And why never study animals in health and natural surroundings? why always sickened and in an environment of strangeness and artificiality?”
—Sarah N. Cleghorn (1976–1959)