Quines produce similar issues to self-referential sentences without being directly self-referential. e.g. "'Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation' yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation."
> "'Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation' yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation."
Here be the limits of my brain.
It does feel (vibes) like an obfuscation of the self-referential canonical 'This sentence is false' example, like a sum of obfuscation techniques that are designed to confuse, but don't materially change the nature of the phenomenon:
1- reference is made implicit, instead of explicit
2- References another object, necessitating (at least) two instances of the same sentence, with one referencing the other.
3- Maybe some unnecessarily complex language that could be made simpler?
So what I'm getting out of it is that it feels like a mental trap that is hard to compute and understand because it was designed that way (or because it evolved that way), not necessarily because of it containing a fundamentally useful knowledge, it's difficulty to parse IS itself the interesting property of the sentence.
Maybe meta analysis like looking into the history of this sentence and seeing how many people went crazy going down that rabbit hole would be more enlightening than engaging in it in good faith. Which might only be useful if you have a high enough IQ that it doesn't confuse you any longer.
Here be the limits of my brain.
It does feel (vibes) like an obfuscation of the self-referential canonical 'This sentence is false' example, like a sum of obfuscation techniques that are designed to confuse, but don't materially change the nature of the phenomenon:
1- reference is made implicit, instead of explicit
2- References another object, necessitating (at least) two instances of the same sentence, with one referencing the other.
3- Maybe some unnecessarily complex language that could be made simpler?
So what I'm getting out of it is that it feels like a mental trap that is hard to compute and understand because it was designed that way (or because it evolved that way), not necessarily because of it containing a fundamentally useful knowledge, it's difficulty to parse IS itself the interesting property of the sentence.
Maybe meta analysis like looking into the history of this sentence and seeing how many people went crazy going down that rabbit hole would be more enlightening than engaging in it in good faith. Which might only be useful if you have a high enough IQ that it doesn't confuse you any longer.