Strange Loops and the Matrix
It’s funny how thought cycles start. And where they lead.
Scott Adams posted something simple, “eleven,” in reply to Elon Musk’s question, “How old were you when you realized others couldn’t see the matrix?”
Scott is only a little older than I am, so the motion picture, “The Matrix,” was not around when he was eleven. But the idea was. The idea that what we can observe and measure—which is quit a lot—is not all there is. That idea has been around as long as man has walked the earth. Possibly longer, as we shall see.
This idea allows that what we cannot observe and measure may be far more important and powerful than what we can. And, this unseen, unmeasured flux is actually the final cause and effect of the entire universe, from the Big Bang to the fleck of crust you removed from your that little divot between your eye and nose this morning.
This “flux,” to use a term borrowed from Steven Brust’s To Reign in Hell, is the matrix, and one’s ability to “see” it is the ultimate measure of understanding.
We can’t really “see” the matrix, though. The matrix—this flux—exists in a dimension our senses are blind to. No amount of science can detect it, measure it, or operate against it. The flux is to creation what physics is to a bird, in that physics might explain a bird’s flight, but birds cannot comprehend or alter physics. Birds fly and ask not why. The matrix is physically unknowable to man. We cannot know what we cannot see, hear, feel, touch, or smell.
So, how do some of us “see” it?
Scientism rejects the existence of anything man cannot observe and measure. Science proper, however, allows for the unobserved. In 1980, scientism rejected the existence of a bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, but two Australian doctors—brothers—proved such a bacterium not only exists but causes most peptic ulcers. They were rewarded by having their licenses revoked by the arbiters of scientism. The same thing happened to poor old Doctor Semmelweis who was driven out of medicine and to an early grave for the sin of discovering germ theory.
Again, science allows for discovery; scientism does not. Scientism says “what you see is all there is.” Science says, “here’s our best guess.”
Scientism is also a hypocrite. Scientism compels us to say, “human activity is causing an alarming increase in earth’s temperature,” while science proper says, “there might be a correlation between certain gasses and temperature, and human activity might be increasing the volume of these gasses.” To the scientist—to those who cannot “see” the matrix—the two statements are identical. To those who can “see,” the two statements are not. One statement is hubristic and vainglorious, while the other is humble. The former statement is a conclusion; the latter is an observation which tacitly acknowledges uncertainty. The first parallel’s MacArthur’s promise, “I shall return.” The latter, Elon Musk’s reply to suggestions he buy MSNBC: “It’s crazy, but it just might work.”
Hold that thought.
I replied to Scott Adams’s one-word post with one of those posts that starts off simple, then expands like one of those compressed mattresses that arrives in a small box and blows up to a 12-inch thick king size mattress upon cutting the plastic wrap surrounding it.
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My reply expanded because Elon’s question, while simple, triggered a series of complex operations in my brain.
“How old were you” causes one’s life to flash before his eyes.
“Others” triggers theory of mind.
“The matrix” conjures up, first, the movie, then what the movie portends.
Three completely different kinds of thought and reasoning working together simultaneously as the mind desperately tries to formulate an answer that’s either honest and true or snarky and funny. Or, both, if you’re lucky.
My answer was honest and, I hope, true, but it also came without much conscious thought. I answered in a stream of consciousness.
I began programming later in life (20s). Having learned lessons from Tony Robbins, I spent as much time learning how top programmers thought as learning the syntax and grammar of languages. The thing that stood out was “patterns.” The great programmers—the rare, true architects—emphasized pattern recognition in a strange-loops (Gödel, Escher, Bach) context that opened my mind to seeing systems as a whole rather than as mere parts. This mindset sort of magically applied itself to everything else: people, institutions, politics, math, theology. This led me to Stoicism, then to a renewal and extension of the Catholic faith my parents lovingly raised me to know. This is what I think of as seeing the matrix.
The careful reader will notice I left out the theory of mind part and, as a result, did not answer Elon’s query.
Or did I?
Theory of Mind refers to the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others, understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one’s own.
After I replied, I took off for Holy Mass, then lunch with my wife. Throughout, the question and answer intruded upon other mental operations, driving me to finally sit down and type about it. Clearly, some part of my mind was not satisfied with the answer I gave. Was it the fact that I did not answer the question? That I did not address the middle part about others?
Or is there a strange loop in operation here?
Theory of mind has to do with one’s ability to put himself in someone else’s shoes. “If I eat the last cookie, my wife will be mad because she hasn’t had one, and I’ve had three,” is an example of our ability to predict or assess what’s going on in someone else’s head. It might be as simple as deciding whether or not to eat the fourth and last cookie or as complicated as influencing half plus one of a group to vote the way you wish them to vote.
But, to some degree, we must also apply theory of mind to ourselves. And this is where the strange loop comes in. “I will be happy if I buy a truck,” is a theory of mind as much as “She will be angry if I eat the last cookie.” Isn’t it strange, though, to apply a tool meant to assess the thoughts and feelings of other people to oneself?1
If you re-read my reply to Scott Adams’s reply to Elon Musk’s question, you will find that I do, indeed, contemplate others, but I have placed myself among the others, as if I have no more control over my post hoc2 emotions than I have over my wife’s.
My reply goes on to mention Stoicism. What the hell does a 2,000-year-old philosophical school have to do with science, scientism, and the matrix? Why did my brain toss that in?
Unlike most philosophical schools that keep philosophical reasoning in a logic-tight compartment isolated from how one lives, Stoicism emphasizes first how we live and reason. To the Stoic mind, happiness depends primarily on knowing what we can control and what we cannot control.
The Stoic, Epictetus, was a slave whose master crippled him for kicks as a young boy. In his Enchiridion, he warns us of the consequences of failing to make and live by this distinction:
If you think you can control things over which you have no control, then you will be hindered and disturbed. You will start complaining and become a fault-finding person.3
And lures us with happiness if we do live by that distinction:
But if you deal with only those things under your control, no one can force you to do anything you don’t want to do; no one can stop you. You will have no enemy, and no harm will come to you.4
Stoicism, then, is something of a strange loop itself. It is a philosophy that deals with how one lives his life day to day and demands harmony with nature. Not just biological nature, but the nature of things in general—the nature of man, man’s purpose. Thus, the Roman Emperor and Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, leaves us with this theory-of-mind examination of his own mind; literally writing to himself:
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: 'I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?'
—But it’s nicer here…
So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations V.1)5
Strange loops, indeed. Man’s job is to do man’s work, but man avoids his work—his nature—because the bed is soft and warm. The dog does not reject the dog’s nature, but man constantly rejects man’s. Some men reject being men and pretend, instead, they are women. Some women pretend they are cats, even obtaining surgery to give them the outward appearance of a cat. But a cat would never sit still for someone to make it into a pseudo-human (which, to a cat, would be to take about nine steps down the evolutionary ladder, like a prince becoming a pauper.)
And this brings us back to Gödel Escher Bach, the book by cognitive scientist, Douglas Hofstadter. The simplest explanation of a strange loop is, for me, his introduction to J.S. Bach’s canons and fugues, musical forms with rules which Bach could bend without breaking in ways that seem impossible and, perhaps, are impossible, at least, according to scientism.
There is one canon in the Musical Offering which is particularly unusual. Labeled simply "Canon per Tonos", it has three voices. The uppermost voice sings a variant of the Royal Theme, while underneath it, two voices provide a canonic harmonization based on a second theme. The lower of this pair sings its theme in C minor (which is the key of the canon as a whole), and the upper of the pair sings the same theme displaced upwards in pitch by an interval of a fifth. What makes this canon different from any other, however, is that when it concludes-or, rather, seems to conclude-it is no longer in the key of C minor, but now is in D minor. Somehow Bach has contrived to modulate (change keys) right under the listener's nose. And it is so constructed that this "ending" ties smoothly onto the beginning again; thus one can repeat the process and return in the key of E, only to join again to the beginning. These successive modulations lead the ear to increasingly remote provinces of tonality, so that after several of them, one would expect to be hopelessly far away from the starting key. And yet magically, after exactly six such modulations, the original key of C minor has been restored! All the voices are exactly one octave higher than they were at the beginning, and here the piece may be broken off in a musically agreeable way. Such, one imagines, was Bach's intention; but Bach indubitably also relished the implication that this process could go on ad infinitum, which is perhaps why he wrote in the margin "As the modulation rises, so may the King's Glory." To emphasize its potentially infinite aspect, I like to call this the "Endlessly Rising Canon".
In this canon, Bach has given us our first example of the notion of Strange Loops. The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started. (Here, the system is that of musical keys.)6
Which brings us back to Elon’s question, “How old were you when you realized others couldn’t see the matrix?”
My answer, which seems on the surface not to answer the question, does answer the question when considering the context of the answer itself. If theory of mind requires some examination of our own minds in relationship to the minds of others, when my answer is complete: I am the other who doesn’t see the matrix. And, yet, I am also the self who does. In other words, there was a time when I did not see the matrix and time when I did see the matrix but I’m not sure when the latter overcame the former. But it was sometime between my introduction to writing software and the time I began complaining, “why can’t these idiots see what I see?”
Perhaps it was when a fellow programmer handed me the book Gödel Escher Bach and told me it was the secret to understanding coding for systems rather than functions and methods and pointers. Perhaps it was when my uncle Pat gave me Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations without explanation except to say, “It helped me get through the war,” referring to World War II. Perhaps it was when I wanted to stay in bed all day instead of working like a man for the first time as a man with children and responsibilities. Perhaps, I do not “see” the matrix still because I cannot see what I cannot see. I could be imagining the matrix because I saw a movie about it and everybody talks about it.
Or, perhaps, I realized the matrix was there and others do not see it simply because God has bestowed sufficient graces on me to see that everything is a strange loop. Creation is a strange loop that moves through Him, with Him, and in Him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, the alpha and the omega, the sine qua non without Whom all is naught.
When, then, did I first realize others could not see the matrix?
I’ve always known it, and, yet, I am still blind myself.
And that is the strange loop we must simply accept as being beyond our powers of observation and measurement though we know implicitly it is with us and in us and we belong to Him.
Our predictions of how some hypothetical will make us feel is less than 17 percent accurate, according numerous studies.
I use post hoc here for its connotative definition more than its literal definition: “occurring or done after the event, especially with reference to the fallacious assumption that the occurrence in question has a logical relationship with the event it follows. (OED)”
Chakrapani, Chuck. The Good Life Handbook: Epictetus' Stoic Classic Enchiridion (p. 69). The Stoic Gym Publications. Kindle Edition.
ibid.
Freeman, Grey (2017). Practical Stoicism: Exercises for Doing the Right Thing Right Now . Kindle Edition.
Hofstadter, Douglas (1979). Gödel Escher Back: An Eternal Golden Braid (p. 18). Basic Books.