I Am a Strange Loop

From our higher-level macroscopic vantage point as we hover above the table, we can see ideas giving rise to other ideas, we can see one symbolic event reminding the system of another symbolic event, we can see elaborate patterns of simmballs coming together and forming even larger patterns that constitute analogies — in short, we can visually eavesdrop on the logic of a thinking mind taking place in the patterned dance of the simmballs. And in this latter view, it is the simmballs that shove each other about, at their own isolated symbolic level.

The simms are still there, to be sure, but they are simply serving the simmballs’ dance, allowing it to happen, with the microdetails of their bashings being no more relevant to the ongoing process of cognition than the microdetails of the bashings of air molecules are relevant to the turning of the blades of a windmill. Any old air-molecule bashings will do — the windmill will turn no matter what, thanks to the aerodynamic nature of its blades. Likewise, any old simm-bashings will do — the “thoughtmill” will churn no matter what, thanks to the symbolic nature of its simmballs.

If any of this strikes you as too far-fetched to be plausible, just return to the human brain and consider what must be going on inside it in order to allow our thinking’s logic to take place. What else is going on inside every human cranium but some story like this?

Of course we have come back to the question that that long-agoshelved book’s title made me ask, and the question that Roger Sperry also asked: Who is shoving whom about in here? And the answer is that it all depends on what level you choose to focus on. Just as, on one level, the primality of 641 could legitimately be said to be shoving about dominos in the domino-chain network, so here there is a level on which the meanings attached to various simmballs can legitimately be said to be shoving other simmballs about. If this all seems topsy-turvy, it certainly is — but it is nonetheless completely consistent with the fundamental causality of the laws of physics.

CHAPTER 4

Loops, Goals, and Loopholes

The First Flushes of Desire

WHEN the first mechanical systems with feedback in them were designed, a set of radically new ideas began coming into focus for humanity. Among the earliest of such systems was James Watt’s steam-engine governor; subsequent ones, which are numberless, include the float-ball mechanism governing the refilling of a flush toilet, the technology inside a heat-seeking missile, and the thermostat. Since the flush toilet is probably the most familiar and the easiest to understand, let’s consider it for a moment.

A flush toilet has a pipe that feeds water into the tank, and as the water level rises, it lifts a hollow float. Attached to the rising float is a rigid rod whose far end is fixed, so that the rod’s angle of tilt reflects the amount of water in the tank. This variable angle controls a valve that regulates the flow of water in the pipe. Thus at a critical level of filling, the angle reaches a critical value and the valve closes totally, thereby shutting off all flow in the pipe. However, if there is leakage from the tank, the water level gradually falls, and of course the float falls with it, the valve opens, and the inflow of water is thereby turned back on. Thus one sometimes gets into cyclic situations where, because a little rubber gizmo didn’t land exactly centered on the tank’s drain right after a flush, the tank slowly leaks for a few minutes, then suddenly fills for a few seconds, then again slowly leaks for a few minutes, then again fills for a few seconds, and so on, in a cyclic pattern that somewhat resembles breathing, and that never stops — that is, not until someone jiggles the toilet handle, thus jiggling the rubber gizmo, hopefully making it land properly on the drain, thus fixing the leak.

Once a friend of mine who was watching my house while I was away for a few weeks’ vacation flushed the toilet on the first day and, by chance, the little rubber gizmo didn’t fall centered, so this cycle was entered. My friend diligently returned a few times to check out the house but he never noticed anything untoward, so the toilet tank kept on leaking and refilling periodically for my entire absence, and as a result I had a $300 water bill. No wonder people are suspicious of feedback loops!