Eventually, if no logical decision point arrives by studying the loop, a point is arrived at where one is forced to remain in the loop ad infinatum or to make an illogical decision - pick the outcome you personally want, and say “f*** off” to the consequences. In continuance with the zen analogy from the post mentioned above - this would be akin to getting up and wandering away from the test entirely.

As with many such circumstances, there is no immediate way to know if you have made the correct choice - the monk doesn’t hit you if you chose wrong, and doesn’t congratulate you if you chose right - you simply have to wait until much further on, and decide on your own if you made the righ choice or not. If you see it, and the movie sucks, then odds are you will decide you made the wrong choice.

You cannot beat an illogical loop with logic. Sometimes you simply have to make a decision when there isn’t enough information available, ’cause in all our decisions, there are invariably factors and effects we miss… Kinda like why this proposed scenario is a joke to ethical philosophers.

I’m doing a bit more research into double binds, or what we called “rhetorical loops” in a previous post. This is a nice passage from the R [...]

If you want to take these loops to a different level, they are the same reason some people become depressed/suicidal.

I’m going to try and do a post on this tonight before I konk out, but in the seventies in alternative psychology, this same premise was really big. Especially with people like RD Laing, the double bind. He basically believed that schizophrenia wasn’t a chemical or biological situation. He thought that in part people got into that situation mentally because they got caught in a problem which was impossible to solve. They got so far down the loop or the bind that they couldn’t get back out again on their own. He has a whole book of these language loops, called “knots” which depict situations that people get themselves in mentally.

James:

Figure out ways to wrangle these loops into submission, so that they serve you rather than torment you.

I think you and some other people gave the classic solution to the problem described by these psychologists above. You’re supposed to widen the parameters of the problem until the loop is no longer tight enough to bind. Then you introduce other elements into it which modify the equation.

I feel there’s an analogy there. (Yup, another one).

Here’s one way to get off the loop, maybe. Read the book. I just read Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and it was excellent, really good. Definitely read it before you get “tainted” by the movie; it could serve as a kind of inoculation.

The key to breaking the loop is to see the loop itself as a state. This allows you to see the transitions out of the loop.

*nods head in agreement*

If you really have a burning desire to ’solve’ the loop, I have a somewhat simple solution. The rhetorical loop relies on your logic jumping between two or more states in some circular sequence. The key to breaking the loop is to see the loop itself as a state. This allows you to see the transitions out of the loop. That didn’t come out very well. It seemed so much simpler in my head. Any questions are welcome. I would love to be able to explain what I am doing there.

Eventually you want to react to the purveyor who peddles these mentally dangerous wares, but that is a much longer subject.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46228

Hilarious. As a CT hobbyist, I find it extremely dead-on.

And, it also serves a purpose, in re: this discussion about loops. What kind of loop is Robert Ericsson stuck in, and how can he step outside of it to confront the reality of his situation? Is he comfortable being stuck in this loop because it gives him a rationale outside of blaming himself? Or is he miserable being stuck in the loop, and is either in denial or silently complicit?

Thank God for The Onion is all I can say…

Loop: “They want us to see it. They don’t want us to see it. They want us to see it. They don’t want us to see it.”

Invented point: “Who cares what they want? I have $9 and I like Natalie Portman.”

Loop: “If you see it, you’ll be tainted. If you don’t see it, you’ll miss out. If you see it, you’ll be tainted. If you don’t see it, you’ll miss out.”

Invented point: “I’ll be tainted no matter what. I watched American Pie and I seem to be OK despite it.”

After a while, oyou begin to map out a whole new geometry for the loop.

I know you didn’t want analogies, but this one works: I make rap beats and use audio loops all the time. There’s a starting point and ending point for all loops, and in order to render them seamless (meaning that the edit point is undetectable to the average listener) there’s a lot of shaving off of both ends in order to make it fit.

A primitive form of the modern audio loop is (as I stated in another post) the vinyl record with a scratch in it. The scratch randomly occurs on the fabric of the record, and if you’re lucky the resulting “loop” might actually make some linear, musical sense. But that’s very rare. More often than not, a scratch on a vinyl record makes no sense, and irritates upon every 33 rpm revolution pass.

Controlling the loop enables an individual to make sense of the repetition, as well as creating an entirely new work from the remnants of something old.

I guess my point is: don’t let cultural events dictate the infinite rhetorial loops that your mind concocts. Figure out ways to wrangle these loops into submission, so that they serve you rather than torment you.

It seems at times that the best way to fix such loops is to either 1) step out of the situation to gain new perspective, or 2) rewrite the premises of the logic loop so it ceases to loop. If the new premises do not match reality, then I think it becomes the task of the individual(s) to make it reality.

Just a thought

http://www.dunneiv.org/?p=351