I Am a Strange Loop

Imagine, if you will, the small, lonely planet of Austranius, whose sole inhabitants are a tribe called the “Klüdgerot”. From time immemorial, the Klüdgerot have lived out their curious lives in a dense jungle of extremely long PM strings, some of which they can safely ingest (strings being their sole source of nutrition) and others of which they must not ingest, lest they be mortally poisoned. Luckily, the resourceful Klüdgerot have found a way to tell apart these opposite sorts of PM strings, for certain strings, when inspected visually, form a message that says, in the lilting Klüdgerotic tongue, “I am edible”, while others form a message in Klüdgerotic that says “I am inedible”. And, quite marvelously, by the Benevolent Grace of Göd, every PM string proclaiming its edibility has turned out to be edible, while every PM string proclaiming its inedibility has turned out to be inedible. Thus have the Klüdgerot thrived for untold öörs on their bountiful planet.

On a fateful döö in the Austranian möönth of Spöö, a strange-looking orange spacecraft swoops down from the distant planet of Ukia and lands exactly at the North Pöö of Austranius. Out steps a hulking whiteheaded alien that announces itself with the words, “I am the Alfbert. Behold.” No sooner has the alien uttered these few words than it trundles off into the Austranian jungle, where it spends not only the rest of Spöö but also all of Blöö, after which it trundles back, slightly bedraggled but otherwise no worse for the wear, to its spacecraft. Bright and early the next döö, the Alfbert solemnly convenes a meeting of all the Klüdgerot on Austranius. As soon as they all have assembled, the Alfbert begins to speak.

“Good döö, virtuous Klüdgerot,” intones the Alfbert. “It is my privilege to report to you that I have made an Austranius-shaking scientific discovery.” The Klüdgerot all sit in respectful if skeptical silence. “Each PM string that grows on this planet,” continues the Alfbert, “turns out to be not merely a long and pretty vine but also, astonishingly enough, a message that can be read and understood. Do not doubt me!” On hearing this non-novelty, many Klüdgerot yawn in unison, and a voice shouts out, “Tell us about it, white head!”, at which scattered chuckles erupt. Encouraged, the Alfbert does just so. “I have made the fantastic discovery that every PM string makes a claim, in my beautiful native tongue of Alfbertic, about certain wondrous entities known as the ‘whole numbers’. Many of you are undoubtedly champing at the bit to have me explain to you, in very simple terms that you can understand, what these so-called ‘whole numbers’ are.”

At the sound of this term, a loud rustling noise is heard among the assembled crowd. Unbeknownst to the Alfbert, the Klüdgerot have for countless generations held the entities called “whole numbers” to be incomprehensibly abstract; indeed, the whole numbers were long ago unanimously declared so loathsome that they were forever banned from the planet, along with all their names. Clearly, the Alfbert’s message is not welcome here. It is of course wrong (that goes without saying), but it is not merely wrong; it is also totally absurd, and it is repugnant, to boot.

But the whiteheaded Alfbert, blithely unaware of the resentment it has churned up, continues to speak as the mob rustles ever more agitatedly. “Yes, denizens of Austranius, fabulously unlikely though it may sound, in each PM string there resides meaning. All it takes is to know how to look at the string in the proper way. By using a suitable mapping, one can…”

All at once pandemonium erupts: has the Alfbert not just uttered the despised word “one”, the long-banished name of the most dreaded of all the whole numbers? “Away with the alien! Off with its white head!” screams the infuriated mob, and a moment later, a phalanx of Klüdgerot grabs hold of the declaiming alien. Yet even as it is being dragged away, the pontificating Alfbert patiently insists to the Klüdgerot that it is merely trying to edify them, that it can perceive momentous facts hidden to them by reading the strings in a language of which they are ignorant, and that… But the angered throng drowns out the Alfbert’s grandiose words.