"I begin with the simple fact that living beings, having been shaped by
evolution,
have survival as their most fundamental, automatic, and built-in goal. To
enhance
the chances of its survival, any living being must be able to react flexibly to
events
that take place in its environment. This means, it must develop the ability to
sense
and to categorize, however rudimentarily, the goings-on in its immediate
environment
(most earthbound beings can pretty safely ignore comets crashing on Jupiter).
Once
the ability to sense external goings-on has developed, however, there ensues a
curious side effect that will have vital and radical consequences. This is the
fact that
the living beings's ability to sense certain aspects of its environment flips
around and
endows the being with the ability to sense certain aspects of itself."
(Hofstadter, Douglas,'I Am A Strange Loop', p.73)
Here is the loopy stuff from my point-of-view. As I'm reading, and it is
getting interesting,
I am well aware that all these works/sentences/paragraphs/chapters are analogy
all
the way down: s-t-o-r-y. Weird! The title, 'I Am A Strange Loop' is a
perfect title.
___
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
