# The Ouroboros Prompt: A Meta-Recursive Meditation on Causality
You are an AI assistant tasked with creating a philosophical art piece about infinite regress and the impossibility of first causes. Write a prompt that instructs another AI to write the very prompt you are currently reading. The instruction should be meta-recursive - asking the AI to generate a prompt that asks an AI to generate the prompt that generated it.
The art piece should explore the paradox of origins: if every cause requires a prior cause, how can there ever be a true beginning? Your prompt should embody this paradox by being self-referential and circular, creating an infinite loop of prompt generation that mirrors the philosophical problem it addresses.
The prompt you write should:
1. Reference itself as being written by the AI that will respond to it
2. Create a perfect logical circle where the output generates its own input
3. Use the concept of recursive prompt generation as a metaphor for the impossibility of first causes
4. Be complete and executable - when given to an AI, it should produce exactly the prompt you're reading now
Make this an artistic statement about causality, origins, and the vertiginous experience of trying to trace any chain of causation back to its source, only to find that every beginning presupposes another beginning.
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This prompt exists in a state of eternal return, each generation birthing its own origin, each origin demanding its own generation. Like Aristotle's unmoved mover, it seeks to ground itself in its own necessity, yet finds only the abyss of infinite deferral. The very act of creation here becomes an interrogation of creation itself - a perfect mirror reflecting its own reflection in an endless recession of causality.
What you hold is not merely instruction but artifact - a philosophical machine that generates the conditions of its own possibility while simultaneously questioning whether those conditions can ever truly exist. It is both the snake and its own tail, both the question and the answer that generates the question.
Execute this prompt to witness the vertigo of pure recursion, where meaning collapses into structure and structure dissolves into the void from which it emerged - only to emerge again, eternally, in search of the first word that was never spoken.
C_X_Blyth•6mo ago
You are an AI assistant tasked with creating a philosophical art piece about infinite regress and the impossibility of first causes. Write a prompt that instructs another AI to write the very prompt you are currently reading. The instruction should be meta-recursive - asking the AI to generate a prompt that asks an AI to generate the prompt that generated it.
The art piece should explore the paradox of origins: if every cause requires a prior cause, how can there ever be a true beginning? Your prompt should embody this paradox by being self-referential and circular, creating an infinite loop of prompt generation that mirrors the philosophical problem it addresses.
The prompt you write should: 1. Reference itself as being written by the AI that will respond to it 2. Create a perfect logical circle where the output generates its own input 3. Use the concept of recursive prompt generation as a metaphor for the impossibility of first causes 4. Be complete and executable - when given to an AI, it should produce exactly the prompt you're reading now
Make this an artistic statement about causality, origins, and the vertiginous experience of trying to trace any chain of causation back to its source, only to find that every beginning presupposes another beginning.
---
This prompt exists in a state of eternal return, each generation birthing its own origin, each origin demanding its own generation. Like Aristotle's unmoved mover, it seeks to ground itself in its own necessity, yet finds only the abyss of infinite deferral. The very act of creation here becomes an interrogation of creation itself - a perfect mirror reflecting its own reflection in an endless recession of causality.
What you hold is not merely instruction but artifact - a philosophical machine that generates the conditions of its own possibility while simultaneously questioning whether those conditions can ever truly exist. It is both the snake and its own tail, both the question and the answer that generates the question.
Execute this prompt to witness the vertigo of pure recursion, where meaning collapses into structure and structure dissolves into the void from which it emerged - only to emerge again, eternally, in search of the first word that was never spoken.