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.
See also:
- I Am a Strange Loop goes into great detail about recursive systems and developing meaning from systems incapable of expressing meaning
- Straussian reading is another kind of recursion where the meaning emerges from multiple layers of understanding about the context of a piece of text rather than the literal transformation of a linked list of ideas into a tree