Self-Loop: In Movies and in Life

In the movie Minority Report, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is a pre-crime agent. Through the advanced technology in the late 21st century, he can predict the crime that is about to happen and prevent it in the first place. He basically hunts down all the bad guys that are about to commit the crime, and preserves safety in the community. One day, the pre-crime system peculiarly predicts that Anderton himself is about to commit a crime, sometime and somewhere, and he freaks out, as the pre-crime system is never wrong. He freaks out because he faces a paradox: Preventing others from committing crime seems plausible and doable, but how does someone prevent himself? If he is going to commit the crime, can he stop himself? If he is not going to commit the crime, then preventing is unnecessary - but is he sure he won't do? What is this "he" that will do it, and what is this "he" that will prevent from doing it?

In the movie Stranger Than Fiction, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) finds himself hearing someone's narration in his head. He gradually finds out that it's a novelist narrating, and he is the real-world incarnation of the character in the novel. Determined to change his own fate, controlled by the novelist Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), Crick sets out a journey to find her. The novelist also gradually finds out this peculiar thing, and to make sure what she writes in the novel actually dictates a real person's life, she writes, "[character name] calls Kay Eiffel..." Right upon finishing the sentence, her phone rings...

Self-loop.

Self-loop idea is as unexpected, engaging and thrilling as it can possibly be. It works well in movies, and we love it. Doesn't it exist in our daily life as well?

There is something that all computer science professors want to do: Write a computer program to check the correctness of students' programs automatically, so the professor doesn't have to check the code himself, which is laborious. However, this has been proven impossible. That is, while the computer program can do a lot of tasks, it can not "understand" itself. A human can understand the program and debug it by checking the set rules and formulas, but the program just can not understand itself.

Self-loop is seen in languages. While saying "Mr. A is lying", or "Ms. B is telling the truth" seems natural, saying "I am lying" is a bit odd. Is this self-looped statement suggesting the speaker is lying, or telling the truth? Can you figure it out with your logic?

Self-loop is seen in us, too. Our brain has the potentiality to understand almost everything. Some things are just yet to be discovered or understood, but will be. But, while we human beings can use the brain to understand many other things, can we use the brain to understand the brain itself, use consciousness to understand consciousness itself, and use "I" to understand "I" itself? If we are like a computer program, created by some higher being, is it possible that we will do and figure out a lot of things but fail in knowing who we really are and what this thing called "I" is?

Self-loop always challenges logic. That makes it interesting. But perhaps, self-loop also holds the key to human being's endeavor in trying to understand himself.