What is the meaning of “turtles all the way down” and “infinite regress”? 🐢🔄
Have you ever heard the phrases “turtles all the way down” and “infinite regress” but aren’t quite sure what they mean? Let’s break it down!
### Turtles All the Way Down
When someone mentions “turtles all the way down,” they are referring to a humorous anecdote that illustrates the idea of an infinite regression. The concept suggests that if you were to ask what is holding up the Earth, the answer might be “it’s turtles all the way down.” This humorous image is often used to explain the idea of an infinite chain of explanations that never ends.
### Infinite Regress
On the other hand, the term “infinite regress” refers to a situation in which a belief or proposition requires an endless series of justifications or causes. It’s like going down a never-ending rabbit hole of explanations without ever reaching a definitive starting point.
So, the next time you hear someone mention “turtles all the way down” or “infinite regress,” you’ll understand that they are talking about the idea of endless explanations or justifications. 🐢🔄
Remember, it’s all about digging deeper and questioning the foundation of our beliefs and knowledge! #TurtlesAllTheWayDown #InfiniteRegress #Philosophy101
The phrase “turtles all the way down” comes from the ancient myth that the world is carried on the back of a turtle. This may raise the question of what *the turtle* is supported by. The phrase suggests that the turtle itself is on another turtle, which is on another, ad infinitum, *all the way down*. This idea doesn’t come from any myths, it’s just an illustrative expression.
Infinite regress is a general term for such situations, where there is no satisfying ultimate cause, every answer raises another question (in this specific example, the question of “what does THAT turtle rest on?”)
Basically that almost everything has a foundation, and that one thing leads to another.
The original quote is supposedly from an astronomer who was confronted by a woman that claimed the earth existed on the back of a giant turtle, and when asked what was underneath it, responded another turtle, ie “its turtles all the way down”.
So generally if we ask why X, its Y, but then we ask… well why Y, and its Z, and so on.
Turtles all the way down is from the turtle island myth, where they said the land is on the back of a turtle.
The natural question is: what is the turtle standing on?
The reply was, of course, on the back of another turtle.
That turtle on another turtle, on another turtle. “it’s turtles all the way down”.
The trope was extended to anything that failed to fully explain something. God created the universe, who created God? Another God? Then it’s just turtles again.
Its coming up recently because of chatgpt. What happens if the input of a language model is from itself? You wind up with turtles.
Regress means really the same thing. Turtles on turtles
There’s a famous story, mentioned in “A brief history of time” and I think “The God delusion”, that relates a scientist (Bertrand Russel?) giving a lecture and after a lady coming up to him and pointing out his mistakes as the world is actually on a turtle. [He] replies “And what is that turtle standing on?” to which she replied…
“You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
“Turtles all the way down” = The myth that the Earth is moving through space on the back of a giant turtle, which is on the back of an even bigger turtle, which is on the back of an even bigger turtle, which is… (repeat infinitely)
“Infinite regress” = I know that A is true because I know that B is true, and I know that B is true because I know that C is true, and I know that C is true because I know that D is true, and I know that D is true because… (repeat infinitely)
I believe “Turtles All The Way Down” refers to a story about Bertrand Russell, who was giving a lecture on astronomy. A woman in the audience argued with his claims, claiming that the Earth was flat. When he asked what the Earth rested on, she said a turtle. When he asked what the turtle rested on, she replied another turtle. He then asked what *that* turtle rested on, hoping to get her to see the problem with her belief.
She instead replied, “You can’t fool me, my good sir: it’s turtles all the way down!”
What Bertrand Russel was trying to guide her towards was that her belief had a fundamental flaw: that her belief depended on every turtle resting on top of another turtle, never *actually* addressing the problem of what the entire stack sits on top of. This is a problem of infinite regression: you can never conceptualize the whole solution, because each “layer” of the solution refers to another layer, infinitely.
Her response dodges this flaw he was trying to point out: she refers to “all the way down,” but this still doesn’t answer what “all the way down” would mean in this case! She is basically accepting that there will simply be as many turtles as needed to reach “all the way down” and not have to think any further than that.
Another example of an infinite regress fallacy would be the following explanation for why chickens exist: chickens exist because they hatch from chicken eggs; and likewise, chicken eggs exist because they’re laid by chickens. This explanation is, of course, incomplete, because it can’t tell you where the first chicken or egg came from: it’s simply “chickens all the way back.”
This can also be a problem in trying to build a knowledge model. Let’s try to teach a computer what “hot” means. That’s simple enough: we can just give it a dictionary and have it look up whatever words it doesn’t know. Of course, the definition of those words it doesn’t know will *also* be made up of words, so it will have to look up those too. And since those third-order words will all be defined by words, the computer will have to look up *those* as well.
And so it goes, words all the way down. Every word is defined by other words in an infinite recursive regression.
This is why LLMs are prone to hallucinations and the kind of errors a human would never make: they can learn enough about the connections between words to fake understanding, but they have no mechanism for actual understanding. It’s words (and relationships between words) all the way down.
(Unlike you, who e.g. learned what “hot” means the first time you put your hand near a flame, without needing any other words to grasp that understanding.)
I personally use it to describe modern computer systems, but it is definitely an old ancient story. Pretty sure what I use it for is not it’s original meaning. What I use it for is to explain all of the sub systems that build everything we rely upon is fragile
The turtle shell is also a lunar calendar, made of 13 sections (months) of 28 days each. It represents cycles of time, fertility, and so on. “Turtles all the way down” carries an esoteric and metaphorical meaning about infinity that most don’t fully appreciate.
To expand on what others have said, the turtles comment comes from a Native American understanding that the ground is the back of a giant turtle. Which, if you were to go up a large hill or better yet a mountain you might see where the myth came from. There’s a curve to the horizon, and the mountains make it look like a shell.
Around the curved land was ocean, water as far as the eye could see, water that went further than the furthest ship. So, a giant turtle in the giant water, of which the land and trees and everything was upon.
In a way it’s a little more accurate than the flat earth theories of ancient Europe since they acknowledged the curve, at least. They just didn’t know how far the curve extended. Nor planetary physics.
So, all these years later, now that we understand that Earth is a planet, the notion that “the earth is on the back of a turtle” gives the image of a globe like a marble or beach ball just sitting on this random space turtle’s back. The question is then “what is the turtle on?” The answer is assumed “another turtle.” The meme grew from this into the phrase “turtles all the way down.”
It’s largely a phrase of mockery against religious/ancient/indigenous understandings of the nature of reality. Ironically, the mockery itself fails to understand how the myth came to be and how it was based on a view of the planet from the top of a mountain noticing the curvature and texture patterns and the distant ocean and assuming all of that meant it was a giant turtle.
But like I said, unlike the flat earth theories found in parts of ancient Europe, which saw the land as flat and positioned between two waters (the waters below and the waters above) the turtle myth at least acknowledged the curvature. It also explained waves and tides (the turtle going up and down and swimming around).
Also, to note, “Earth” is itself the name of a goddess. It’s etymology goes back to
old Norse [Jörð](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6r%C3%B0), the mother of Thor. “Earth” was a flat ground held up on a giant tree. But note how the phrase isn’t “Trees all the way down” in a similar mocking fashion, even though we still refer to this planet by the name of that goddess. Likewise, criticisms of Gaia don’t emerge even though we use Gaia in our scientific references to the planet (e.g., geography | ge-graphe | gaia-graphe | earth-writing).
This tendency to refer to Native American concepts with ridicule can also be seen in how the names are translated. We don’t call the man Tatanka Iyotake, instead it’s translated out as “Sitting Bull.” The equivalent would be translating the Greek name Phillipos as “Loves Horses”. Like “Hey everyone, Loves Horses is here.” The same with Peter. Ho Petros didn’t just mean “rock”, it was literally the words “the rock.” As in “Hey everyone, The Rock wants a cup of water.” Native American names get rendered Runs-With-Wind and so forth, making them sound exotic and somehow different from ancient European names even though Europeans did the exact same thing.
In summary/tldr: “turtles all the way down” is a phrase of mockery of indigenous cosmology because they saw the land as the back of a giant turtle that was swimming in a giant ocean.
Infinite Regress means that it’s turtles all the way down, and turtles all the way down means that they are infinitely regressing…
Keep repeating the phrase: In order to understand regression, you must first understand regression.