I Am a Strange Loop

SL #641: Perhaps, but like many strange fruits of modern science, it can sound crazy yet be right. At one time it sounded crazy to say that the earth moved and the sun was still, since it was patently obvious that it was the other way around. Today we can see it either way, depending on circumstances. When we’re in an everyday frame of mind, we say, “The sun is setting”, and when we’re in a scientific frame of mind we remember that the earth is merely turning. We are flexible creatures, able to shift point of view according to circumstance.

SL #642: And so, in your view, should we also be able to shift points of view concerning the existence of an “I”?

SL #641: Definitely. My claim that an “I” is a hallucination perceived by a hallucination is somewhat like the heliocentric viewpoint — it can yield new insights but it’s very counterintuitive, and it’s hardly conducive to easy communication with other human beings, who all believe in their “I” ’s with indomitable fervor. We explain our own behavior, and that of others, through the positing of our own “I” and its analogues in other people. This naïve viewpoint allows us to talk about the world of people in terms that make perfect sense to people.

SL #642: Naïve?! I notice that you haven’t stopped saying “I”! You’ve probably said it a hundred times in the last five minutes!

SL #641: To be sure. You’re absolutely right. This “I” is a necessary, indispensable concept to all of us, even if it’s an illusion, like thinking that the sun is circling the earth because it rises, moves across the sky, and sets. It’s only when our naïve viewpoint about “I” bangs up against the world of physics that it runs into all sorts of difficulties. It’s at that point that those of us who are scientifically inclined realize that there has to be some other story to be told about it. But believing in the easy story about “I” is a million times more important to most of us than figuring out a scientific explanation for “I”, so the upshot is that there’s no contest. The “I” myth wins hands down, without a debate ever taking place — even in the minds of the majority of scientifically inclined people!

SL #642: How can that be?

SL #641: I surmise it’s for two reasons. One is that the “I” myth is infinitely more central to our belief systems than is the “sun circling the earth” myth, and the other is that any scientific alternative to it is far subtler and more disorienting than the shift to heliocentrism was. And so the “I” myth is much harder to dislodge from our minds than the “sun circling the earth” myth. Deconstructing the “I” holds about as much appeal for a typical adult as deconstructing Santa Claus would hold for a typical toddler. Actually, giving up Santa Claus is trivial compared to giving up “I”. Ceasing to believe altogether in the “I” is in fact impossible, because it is indispensable for survival. Like it or not, we humans are stuck for good with this myth.

.SL #642: Why do you keep on saying the “I” is just a myth or a hallucination or an illusion, just like that blasted non-marble? I’m tired of your trotting out your tired old marble metaphor. I want to know what’s hallucinated.

SL #641: All right, let’s put the marble metaphor to bed for a while. The basic idea is that the dance of symbols in a brain is itself perceived by symbols, and that step extends the dance, and so round and round it goes. That, in a nutshell, is what consciousness is. But if you recall, symbols are simply large phenomena made out of nonsymbolic neural activity, so you can shift viewpoint and get rid of the language of symbols entirely, in which case the “I” disintegrates. It just poofs out of existence, so there’s no room left for downward causality.

SL #642: What does that mean, more specifically?

SL #641: It means that in the new picture there are no desires, beliefs, character traits, senses of humor, ideas, memories, or anything mentalistic; just itty-bitty physical events (particle collisions, in essence) are left. One can do likewise in the careenium, where you can shift points of view, either looking at things at the level of simmballs or looking at things at the level of simms. At the former level, the simms are totally unseen, and at the latter level, the simmballs are totally unseen. These rival viewpoints really are extreme opposites, like the heliocentric and geocentric views.

SL #642: All of this I see, but why do you keep implying that one of these views is an illusion, and the other one is the truth? You always give primacy to the particle viewpoint, the lower-level microscopic viewpoint. Why are you so prejudiced? Why don’t you simply see two equally good rival views that we can oscillate between as we find appropriate, in somewhat the way that physicists can oscillate between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics when they deal with gases?