Why is it that we would use the very same word to denote two different levels on a ladder of abstraction? - Douglas Hofstadter

Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not.

Often compound words have drifted so far from their etymological roots that native speakers can easily miss what is right in front of their eyes.

"For an imperfect but vivid concrete analogue to this curious abstract phenomenon, think of what happens when a TV camera is pointed at a TV screen so as to display the screen on itself (and that screen on itself, etc.)- what in GEB I called a "self-engulfing television", and in my later writings I sometimes call a "level-crossing feedback loop."

When and only when such a loop arises in a brain or in any other substrate, is a person-a unique new "I" - brought into being. Moreover, the more self-referentially rich such a loop is, the more conscious is the self to which it gives rise. Yes, shocking though this might sound, consciousness is not an on/off phenomenon, but admits of degrees, grades, shades. Or, to put it more bluntly, there are bigger souls and smaller souls."