I Am a Strange Loop

by Douglas R. Hofstadter

By the time we emerge from childhood, we have acquired a reflex-level intuition for where most of our everyday world’s loci of unpredictability lie, and the more unpredictable end of this spectrum simultaneously beckons to us and frightens us. We’re pulled by but fearful of risk-taking. That is the nature of life.

In the video called “Virtual Creatures” by Karl Sims, there are virtual objects made out of a few (virtual) tubes hinged together, and these objects can “flap” their limbs and thus locomote across a (virtual) flat plane. When they are given a rudimentary sort of perception and a simple feedback loop is set up that causes them to pursue certain kinds of resources, then the driven manner in which they pursue what looks like food and frantically struggle with “rivals” to reach this resource gives viewers an eerie sensation of witnessing primitive living creatures engaged in life-and-death battles.