Strange Loops

The concept of Strange Loop is an invention of Douglas Hofstadter, who made them a theme of his master work, Gödel, Escher, Bach [Hofstadter 1989]. He says that a strange loop occurs "whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started."

In the forest (the biological one), if we start at the level of soil, water and the debris on the forest floor, we can follow the path of this material as it's integrated with seeds, sunlight, air and more water into a tree. And it stays in the tree for a very long time. Some of it falls back to the floor either as last year's leaves or as deadfall, until the tree dies and it, too, falls to the floor. And so we have returned to where we began.

This cycle supports a feedback loop. For example, if, over several years, the trees reproduce too rapidly, too much of the material of the forest will become tied up in young trees, which makes it difficult for trees to reproduce, thus regulating the population. But that feedback loop isn't a strange loop. What makes the cycle a strange loop is that the trees can influence the way the forest builds itself by communicating with their environment at a higher level. For instance, they can adjust the composition of the forest floor in ways that influence the composition of the tree population. This is how the resin and needle mass in the floor of a pine forest defends the territory of the pines, by preventing colonization by other varieties. In effect, the action of the pines adjusts their own environment to favor pines over other trees. This is what makes the material cycle of a forest system a Strange Loop.

In the Forest of Ideas, we begin with the pieces of thoughts, ideas and feelings from which workable ideas are made. And we use those ideas for a long time, until they're outmoded, turned into history, by changes in the environment. But from those old ideas can come new thoughts, that will eventually find their way into new ideas, which in turn change our connections to the old ideas.

To understand the power of strange loops, consider a parable that has been floating around the Internet of late. It's often presented as an explanation for the origins of organizational policy, and sometimes goes by the name "Primate Thinking Committee Experiment." Although the parable is widespread, nobody seems to know its origin.

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb toward the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result — all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when a monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he'll be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they weren't permitted to climb the stairs, or why they're participating.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys that have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not?

In this strange loop, the initiating event is the training of the original group of monkeys. This training is actually the creation of a belief system. But once the monkeys are replaced one by one, according to a careful plan, the group provides its own training events. After the group settles into a configuration that sustains itself, the initiating events aren't relevant to the persistence of the configuration — the system has no memory of the initiating events. That's one of the hallmarks of a strange loop.

Text Source: My ex-colleague and good friend, Steve. Picture Source: Wikipedia