Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

The Mirroring Mind

Another nicely done piece by Jason Silva, though my phlegmatic personality sometimes wants him to just chill a bit and get some of those concepts across without the adrenalin-infused hype and activity.

Created by Jason Silva in collaboration with CITIZEN. Follow Jason on twitter @JASONSILVA

This video is a non-commercial work created to inspire, made for educational purposes, inspired by the ideas of Douglas Hofstadter explored in the magnificent book GODEL, ESCHER, BACH: An Eternal Golden Braid.

It offers my interpretation of Strange Loops of Self Reference, recursion, and the emergence of consciousness and self-awareness:

“To Hofstadter, the human mind is a bright, shimmering, self-sustaining miracle of philosophical bootstrappery” – Lev Grossman.

“You know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your whole life” – The Matrix

It is also inspired by some of the writing of Erik Davis in Techgnosis.com about the hero’s journey taken by NEO in the Matrix in order to understand who he is:

“Neo must then face his own Cartesian “passage through madness,” melting into a mirror that alludes not only to Lewis Carroll but to the mystic-psychotic collapse and disappearance of the externalized ego that stabilizes our inner void. As Neo phases out of the Matrix, he opens up, however briefly, the fractured bardo that is the secret thrill of every fan of the “false reality” genre: the moment when baseline reality dissolves but no new world has yet emerged in its pixelating wake. This is the most radical moment of the cogito, but it’s tough to sustain.”

It features the track “The Awakening” by Andy Quinn

Full credits for everything used in the remix at Vimeo.

You might also like:

Editor
  1. from the Self-Writing-Poem-Dept.
    wow, good distillation of what Douglas was getting at in his Godel, Escher, Bach (after which he wrote his commentary book, I Am a Strange Loop)…his theories show that even words like ‘materialist’ are really just BS (belief systems)…

    i was actually able to use some of Douglas’ material during the Celebration of Life for my Oma :3

  2. “sometimes want him to just
    “sometimes want him to just chill a bit and get some of those concepts across without the adrenalin-infused hype and activity.”

    Agreed. The hyper choppy images and his fast-talking rap compete for attention making it difficult to absorb what he is saying…

    But I watched a follow up link to his interview with CBS News in which he stated his goal of creating “video shots of philosophical espresso”. That I would say he achieves, so mission accomplished.

    And of course I appreciate the subject matter as I reread Holographic Universe and its concepts of interconnectedness and illusory nature of reality, etal…

  3. Godel, religion, and the afterlife
    Godel held some interesting religious views. From Wikipedia:

    Gödel was a convinced theist. He rejected the notion of others like his friend Albert Einstein that God was impersonal. He believed firmly in an afterlife, stating: “Of course this supposes that there are many relationships which today’s science and received wisdom haven’t any inkling of. But I am convinced of this [the afterlife], independently of any theology.” It is “possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning” that it “is entirely consistent with known facts.” “If the world is rationally constructed and has meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife].” In an unmailed answer to a questionnaire, Gödel described his religion as “baptized Lutheran (but not member of any religious congregation). My belief is theistic, not pantheistic, following Leibniz rather than Spinoza.” He said about Islam: “I like Islam: it is a consistent[or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded.”

    1. Godel would have loved modern
      Godel would have loved modern paranormal reality TV though he might not have publically acknowledged it. I know a couple of closet watchers of the shows whose academic standing prevents them from admitting to such slumming.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal