Edward Yukowski mentioned a study of a monkey tribe as part of an explanation for the arousal of intelligence - namely, that the run-away process of social competition is what drove is to have bigger, better brains.
Well, had an interesting connection with this - If we take a Strange Loop to entail the way in which a formal, rigid system - a non-sentient system, we might say - become intelligent- and we take that a Strange Loop can be fundamentally a self-referential device - a means for a system to generate meaning by referencing itself in the way that language derives meaning from the world around it - then wouldn't a strange loop for intelligence be a self-referential intelligence? (Bam! I think, therefore I am - took on a whole new meaning). To put it another way, one having to do with social monkeys - we take the ability to model another intelligence - developed for use in a competitive social environment - and turn it to modeling ourselves...
Yeah, that sounds about right.
In other thought, I've often remarked that something about LGBT people is attractive to me, something that seems common in all of them but uncommon in most other people. I used to think that it was the act of saying so strongly (due to the ressistance) I am This! - that what I found attractive was that decisive act (and what then comes from it). Now perhaps I wonder if what I find attractive in that is the greater presence of consciousness itself; that greater degree of self-awareness that comes from such an assertion? I'll have to think on this more, but the thought presented itself to me and I didn't want to turn it away.
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