I recommend Douglas Hofstadter's books Gödel, Escher, Bach (where I first read about video feedback) and I Am A Strange Loop. "The core intellectual claim, the

I recommend Douglas Hofstadter's books Gödel, Escher, Bach (where I first read about video feedback) and I Am A Strange Loop. "The core intellectual claim, then, is much the same as that of Gödel, Escher, Bach: namely, that a proper understanding of Gödel's proof helps us to see that life, mind and self are all constituted not by biochemistry but by the higher-level patterns that biochemistry makes possible. In particular, human selves are abstract self-referential (reflexively looping) patterns that arise spontaneously out of the meaningless base of neural activity. These patterns are real, albeit abstract. And they have real causal power, even though they are epiphenomena generated by the brain. They affect other patterns within the mind-complex, and they loop back into the brain itself. Unlike the complex patterns generated when a video camera is focused on a television screen showing its own output (an analogy repeatedly used to demystify the notion of strange loops), the human-self patterns can determine changes within the system's hardware. But this mind-brain causation is nothing "spooky" or supernatural. It's an emergent consequence of the physical complexity of human brains." https://www.americanscientist.org/article/self-assembly https://www.americanscientist.org/article/self-assembly