Recursion

[cosmolinguist]

greenflower and josh8e just gave me Michael Crichton's Prey for my birthday. Reading it today, I came across this:

Personally, I always thougt there was a clue from computer programming, in a procedure called recursion. Recursion means making the program loop back on itself, to use its own information to do things over and over until it gets a result. You use recursion for certain data-sorting algorithms and things like that. But it's got to be done carefully, or you risk having the machine fall into what's called an infinite regress. It's the programming eqivalent of those funhouse mirrors that reflect mirrors, and mirrors, ever smaller and smaller, stretching away to infinity. The program keeps going, repeating and repeating, but nothing happens. The machine hangs.

Before I was even done with the paragraph I was thinking Hey, that sounds familiar!  It wouldn't be the first time I've compared my brain to a computer.  Then I read the next paragraph.

I always figured something similar must happen when people turn their psychological-insight apparatus on themselves. The brain hangs. The thought process goes and goes, but it doesn't get anywhere. It must be something like that, because we know people can think about themselves indefinitely. Some people think of little else. Yet people never seem to change as a result of their intensive introspection. They never understand themselves better.

Yes. This is, pretty much, exactly what's been happening to me recently.  I think, or hope, that it is over now and I am gradually moving on to having new things to think about.

Comments

[josh8e.livejournal.com]

Good luck... glad the book is providing some utility:)

[cosmolinguist]

Ooo, snazzy new picture.

I like the book a lot, so far. It's the first new Crichton I've read in a few years, and it seems to be more human somehow than his earlier books. I've found it to have the same cool science stuff but with more character development and thoughtful stuff, like what I posted here. I like that.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Only posting something brief, as I'm in work (I've been told to 'have a drink, sit there and look pretty til the supervisor gets back', so I'm doing at least two of the three...), but just to say two things:
Firstly, the 'infinite loop' thing is a classic - perhaps *the* classic - symptom of clinical depression. You know I've thought for a while that you're depressive...
Secondly, if you're interested in consciousness as it applies to computers and recursion, you *need* to read Godel, Escher, Bach.
Talk later.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes, I know you think I'm depressive, and you weren't the first (my depressive friends always tell me that they recognize it in me, so I think that makes you third, at least). But I am, at least temporarily, better now. I can tell because I'm mad at everything I was despairing about before, and I'm not letting my brain get away with that tedious infinite-regress stuff.

And remember, I read the beginning of Godel Escher Bach last spring, had to take it back to the library, was told I could read your copy, and then learned that your mom had it and didn't know where it was any more. So, I'm all for reading it, if I get the chance. :-)