Overview
Strange loops are circular paths found in hierarchies where moving in any direction eventually leads back to the same starting point. These hierarchies are then referred to as “tangled hierarchies.” I find that it’s easiest to explain the concept through examples:
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Say you enter a store to return an item at the front-desk. The clerk says he can’t initiate a review for the item’s return without approval from the manager. The manager says she can’t approve the clerk’s request for a review without approval from the director. The director says she doesn’t review items until one of her subordinates has flagged it, sending you back to the front-desk clerk. This makes it so that escalating the issue up the hierarchy eventually takes you right back to the bottom.
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A logo for a product in which someone is holding up the product, which features a smaller version of the logo for that product, leads to loop where zooming in on each layer of the logo just reproduces the image you were already looking at.
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In the book Catch-22, the protagonist Yossarian attempts to get out of flying dangerous combat missions. He is told that to be grounded, one must be declared insane. In order to be evaluated, you must request to be grounded for being insane, since anyone who wants to fly more dangerous missions must be irrational and insane. Requesting to be grounded for being insane reflects a rational and sane desire to stop flying missions for your own safety. Therefore, you are sane if you request an evaluation for insanity, and you must keep flying dangerous missions regardless.
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The acronym PHP in a software context stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”, so each time you attempt to write out the acronym completely, you arrive at the same phrase that contains another acronym.
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Our brains build a symbol called “I” through thoughts; the “I” feels like it’s the thing that controls what the brain thinks about. Any attempt to understand our own consciousness is arguably an approximation of our own approximation.
History and Etymology
The term “strange loop” was popularized by Douglas Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, Bach and I Am a Strange Loop.