You Are A Strange Loop

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Written by Michael Beam & Will Schoder
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ART
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FURTHER READING
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MUSIC
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Music provided by Musicbed & Epidemic Sound

"Dismantle" by Peter Sandberg
"The Time to Run (Finale)" by Dexter Britain
"What If" by Joachim Heinrich
"The Awakening" by Andy Quin

[AnnCorrineBelmont]

Nothing like an existential crisis first thing in the morning

[schodes]

I'm gonna try and answer all your comments. Have a good rest of your weekend!
Much love,
Will

[bigpictureguys]

I really miss you man. You’re videos have had a huge impact on my life and my sobriety. I’m eternally grateful for your loop

[robertbaillargeon]

Just a heads-up, I bet Douglas Hofstadter would be really glad to hear about this video--I once emailed him to say I had made a few videos explaining Godel's Incompleteness Theorem using his ideas and he seemed happy that people are grappling with and spreading his ideas in the wide world. His email was pretty easy to find, too, from what I recall.

[JacksMovieReviews]

Great topic with excellent presentation as always.

[wobpoic]

The strange loop of consciousness was understood well here.
“Those who speak do not know, those who know do not speak”. This quote sums it up.

[AtenaHena]

i've had these notion of "our brains packaging impossibly complex functions into understandable symbols" in alot of vague thoughts but this video articulated everything really well, good job!

[dawgalova]

One of the highest quality video essays I've ever seen--fantastic work. I hope for nothing but success with your channel.

[mrmadmaxalot]

Good to see Hofstadter getting a presentation, since he isn't talked about nearly enough. I came across Gödel, Escher, Bach when I was a youngster back in the mid 90s. Finally read the whole book in the early 2000s and realized I had just found something marvelous. I had "I am a Strange Loop" preordered from Amazon back when it came out. He has the most lucid deduction of how consciousness works of anyone I have read.

[kylefowler]

My god, brilliant summation, visuals, and synthesis of ideas! This video is an almost ideal embodiment of the concept divined by Hofstadter: a strange 22 minute loop that somehow drops us off exactly where we started, but with a profound and renewed appreciation for what it means to be conscious. You’ve definitely earned a new patron!

[emilelachapelle]

Dude you make some of the best content on youtube
You probably won't see this but I am thouroughly impressed with the research and the edit in this.
You're really good at this and I'll wait however long it takes for your next great video.

[Peestachio]

You are making some of the best, most well produced content I've seen on Youtube in awhile. Keep up the great work man, this stuff is really eye opening.

[rpichp]

This is outrageously high quality and beyond insightful. Comments, likes, and subscribes cannot adequately reward the level of this work, the information imparted, or the depth the material is given. Thank you for your diligence. What you have created is special.

[obeqwaet]

This has been sitting in my "Watch Later" list since it was released, I knew I wasn't going to be ready for it.

I just finished the vid. I'm still not. Thank you.

[ChristianMartinez-nseu]

There's a few times i took LSD and during my trips there were moments when reality itself just felt like an infinite loop

[timeaesnyx]

Proving the self is circular reasoning, but the existence of the self is axiomatic.

[larsatticus]

I watch a lot of video essays, so every so often I'll daydream about making one of my own. One idea I've been floating around is the philosophical implications of us being groups of atoms that got big enough to actually think about stuff. I'm under no illusion that I could make such a video as I'm neither an expert in physics or philosophy, but this video really scratched that itch and provided a lot of insight! I'll be sure to check out that book too. It's really invigorating to know that other people are thinking about the same things and sharing these ideas with each other. I'm sure this sounds trite, it's just - it's a good feeling seeing someone else having made the video essay I've been daydreaming about, and to get a book recommendation out of it! Great work.

[tomhuis]

This was poignant, refreshing and existentially beautiful. The impact of this high calibre work of art is insurmountably positive, the effects of which will ripple eternally. I hope you and whoever raised you are proud.

[luckyyuri]

There's a very crucial twist to the loop that wasn't expressed here: my being is already structured in such a way that IRRESPECTIVE of what the individuals on the lower levels "want" (like quantum particles, molecules, neurons or larger functional areas) the whole structure AS A WHOLE constrains those lower level actions into a coherent "macro action". Just like individuals build and make up a society, once it’s set in place it takes a mind of its own, constraining the individuals that made it (driving laws, legal procedures, even things like rites of passage, etc). I, the lower level individual, do the things i do because the society has imposed them on me (i dress, i go to work, i drive on the right, i don’t steal, i choose one girl and call it my “wife", i pay taxes, i go on "vacations”, i call myself “sir" and go by the name of "John Nash" and can’t change it at my whim, etc etc).

Off course, the organism does this to a whole other level, as a society isn’t coming close to being a living organism. Also, society is in large part built around the good of the individual. For living organisms, it’s the other way around—the lower level individuals are organized around the good of the higher level entity.

Many people could derive from the video that whatever the lower level molecules and neurons decide, than that's what the whole being does - but this is not a complete understanding of the strange glorious dimensions of a loop. For instance, there is an area that's been discovered to control our attention, BUT IT WOULD BE WRONG to say that area X controls my attention. In reality, area X takes a huge number of inputs from other areas, F, H, D, Y, W, etc, which in their turn are each taking inputs from another huge number of areas. If you follow these immensely complex loops you eventually see how the whole structure folds back onto itself, and THERE ISN'T ANY ONE SINGLE SUBSTRUCTURE THAT MAKES IMPORTANT DECISIONS. Area X by itself doesn't do shit, so in a way you could say that area X in fact DOESN'T control attention. Similarly, a steering wheel can be said to be responsible for a car’s direction, but take it off the car and put it on the asphalt. Does it do anything? This is because a car’s ability to turn resides in everything taken as a whole: rubber, rims, bolts, chassis, motor, etc.

I’m not paying attention to this subject because "my attention area made me do it". I’m paying attention because this is what my whole being is doing.

We really are conscious selves that have a significant degree of auto-regulation. Indeed, neurons have absolutely no idea what they are doing, but the WHOLE does!

[lliw]

This video is pure gold, really well edited and excellent content. We need more videos like this. Definitely worth the subscription.