Refers to the Leo Strauss notion that serious writers communicate ideas through many layers of meaning and abstraction which simultaneously protects the author from the ruling regime and attracts the right readers. A ‘Straussian reading’ or interpretation is extracting the hidden subtext and stating it openly.
See also:
- Learning how to read which discusses multi-layer recursion to understand certain texts.
- Tyler Cowen often refers to this when asking interviewees for a more full interpretation of a piece of writing that includes the context of the author and environment in which it was written.
Links to this note
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Tupper’s Self-Referential Formula Is a Visual Loop
Tupper’s formula displays its formula when plotted on a graph. This is a form of recursion but more like a mirror. Compared to Godel’s incompleteness theorem (also self-referential), Tupper’s formula is more like perception not reception—it does not create new meaning in a system unintended to do so (Principia Mathematica) and is more like a reflection of itself.