Isn't a self-creating universe circular?
No, because the loop is an equation, and circularity is a fault of arguments. A circular argument assumes its conclusion in order to prove it. An equation such as x = 1 + 1/x has the unknown on both sides and picks out one positive number, 1.6180339887, which a calculator reaches from any positive start. The universe's loop works the same way. It is a condition on a description and the world it describes, taken together, and a history either satisfies it or fails. A loop that let every history through would explain nothing, and this one rules out every history whose observers could not recover its rules and build the screen that computes it. Nothing in it has to come first. Part of the condition can be tested on hardware. Split the computation across a thousand machines and it finishes in the state a single machine reaches.
Also in Chapter 37: Why Does the Loop Have No Beginning?, Chapter 2: Why Is There Anything Rather Than Nothing?.
This answer comes from OPH, Observer Patch Holography. OPH is a rigorous, consistent and complete description of the unified, self-creating computational Universe we inhabit. Its consistency is machine-checked: the fixed point at its core is constructed explicitly, and a theory with a model contains no contradiction.
To understand OPH and check every step yourself, start with the free book Reverse Engineering Reality. It builds the theory from the ground up, and the OPH Notebook answers your questions while you read.
read the free bookask the notebookor ask sage:read appendix a: Eighteen Questionswatch a universe make its own particles