Semantic satiation (“a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener”) is the tip of a very big iceberg. Much of what Lewis Carroll was trying to do was turn it into a martial art. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation …
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Constructed to what end? To break down your stream of consciousness at the verbal base layer through a kind of gentle torture based on the same principles as semantic satiation.
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For example, his endless use of indirections in naming and pointing is not an early anticipation of C programming pointer chase interview questions. It’s not meant to test your ability to reason in convoluted ways, but to make you abandon the attempt.
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Basically he was trying to get the effects of good poetry through mathematical means. Creating a verbal reality that dismantles its own verbal foundations even as it evolves, leaving behind only the felt world. Like the grin without the Cheshire Cat. All 50 years before Godel.
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I previously lazily assumed that as a mathematician Carroll was likely average, but now I’m not so sure. Seen as math-poetry of verbal derealization, Alice is almost a premonition of Godel. And looking at some of his puzzles, there was definitely a very live connection.
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Like, he played a lot with rewrite rule puzzles (like connecting two 4 letter words via a series of transformations), recursion etc. Ops that play a major role in Godel. It almost feels like he was to Godel (via Alice) something like Frege. Just via a much more scenic route.
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