In this section, Hofstadter discusses some very interesting concepts. One of these concepts is parallel processing. He discussed how a program named "Hearsay II" could construct 'multiple top-level structures at once. An analogous vision program would construct several top-level interpretations for a scene, all in parallel.' If I were to compare this feature of Hearsay II to human cogntion it would be like having access to multiple states of perception at the same time which is very hard to imagine and may even be impossible, but it's fun to think about.
Another interesting concept that was discussed is called "intelligent backtracking". This involves taking a step backwards and undoing some prior decision. For this to happen, the program must first realize that where it currently is is not where it wants to be. For example, perhaps Jumbo created a "word-like" word but it is not really a word. It must realize that the group of letters is not a word and then go back and take a different route to wordhood. This interests me because it seems as if Jumbo is actually thinking, and maybe it really is.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Jumbo 97-111
This section focuses on a very complex and maybe even genious computer program named Jumbo. Jembo's purpose was to be able to imitate human cognition that takes place when one is playing the newspaper game "Jumble." One interesting property of Jumbo is that it has no knowledge of the English dictionary, instead it uses pre-set rules that apply to the English language to construct 'english-like' words.
Another interesting part of this section is how intelligence is defined, which is as follows:
"intelligence emerges out of the interactions of many thousands of parallel processes that take place within miliseconds and are inaccessible to introspection." According to this definition it seems like it would be nearly impossible to re-create human-level cognition, but I have a feeling some of these people are going to die trying and may even achieve such a feat.
I find it very impressive that a program that is designed to form English words out of scrambled letters can do so with out "knowing" the words of the enlgish language. I can't imagine how complex the code must be for such a program.
Another interesting part of this section is how intelligence is defined, which is as follows:
"intelligence emerges out of the interactions of many thousands of parallel processes that take place within miliseconds and are inaccessible to introspection." According to this definition it seems like it would be nearly impossible to re-create human-level cognition, but I have a feeling some of these people are going to die trying and may even achieve such a feat.
I find it very impressive that a program that is designed to form English words out of scrambled letters can do so with out "knowing" the words of the enlgish language. I can't imagine how complex the code must be for such a program.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
It's All In Your Head 86-97
In this section Hofstadter starts off by telling us a little bit about a program called Jumbo. Jumbo tried to make English-like words out of a set of latters by re-arranging them and putting them into plausable orders. Hofstadter then goes on to tell us that he personally enjoys doing anagrams and is curious what goes on in one's brain while figuring out such problems. Hofstadter claims that words just magically pop into his head and he felt like a passive observer to this phenomenon.
Hofstadter then goes on to discuss knowledge sources, which he abreviates as KS. He claims that knowledge sources have to "sensory organs" to inform it and sense things in its surroundings. This makes me think that humans are probably the most advanced knowledge sources ever to exist.
Hofstadter then goes on to talk about something he read in a paper by Fennell & Lesser from 1975. What he read was: "Preconditions themselves have preconditions, call then 'pre-preconditions.' In HSII, knowledge-source preconditions.... may be arbitrarily complex. In order to avoid executing these precondition tests unnecessarily often, they in turn have pre-preconditions which are essentially monitors on relevant primitive data base events.... Whenever any of these primitive events occurs, those preconditions monitoring such events are awakened and allowed to test for full precondition satisfaction." Hofstadter really thought that this quote was packed with important information even though it was not emphasized in the reading. The fact that Hofstadter saw the value of that quote shows his natural ability to notice important information and use it to further enhance his studies and ideas.
Hofstadter then goes on to discuss knowledge sources, which he abreviates as KS. He claims that knowledge sources have to "sensory organs" to inform it and sense things in its surroundings. This makes me think that humans are probably the most advanced knowledge sources ever to exist.
Hofstadter then goes on to talk about something he read in a paper by Fennell & Lesser from 1975. What he read was: "Preconditions themselves have preconditions, call then 'pre-preconditions.' In HSII, knowledge-source preconditions.... may be arbitrarily complex. In order to avoid executing these precondition tests unnecessarily often, they in turn have pre-preconditions which are essentially monitors on relevant primitive data base events.... Whenever any of these primitive events occurs, those preconditions monitoring such events are awakened and allowed to test for full precondition satisfaction." Hofstadter really thought that this quote was packed with important information even though it was not emphasized in the reading. The fact that Hofstadter saw the value of that quote shows his natural ability to notice important information and use it to further enhance his studies and ideas.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Not So Common Sense 70-86
Hofstadter starts this section by talking about what seperates great mathematicians from ordinary mathematicians. He claims that an ordinary mathematicians ask themselves "how can I prove this to be true" after discovering something new, but great mathematicians ask themselves "how interesting is this idea, and by fiddeling around with it, could I find ideas that are even more interesting." I agree with Hofstadter on this, it seems that he is trying to say that great mathematicians try to better the understanding of the world by thinking of new ideas while ordinary mathematicians only care about how they can prove that what they discovered is true so they can get credit, while they don't really care about new interesting ideas.
Hofstadter goes on to discuuss what he calls 'conceptual spheres' which he describes as being a family of concepts that lie in our collective consciousness that applies to a central concept. He then generalizes it saying that conceptual spheres don't apply just in mathematics but in everyday thought. An example of one of these conceptual spheres coming into existence involves the "Tylenol murders" that took place in Chicago. Someone planting poisonous pills in bottles of Tylenol which were consumed by custumors who were then poisoned to death. The FDA, in response to this, established new rules and regulations pertaining to drug packaging. The FDA thought very narrowly, as they did not extend the new regulations beyond the domain of drugs. It is as if the FDA's thought process was trapped in a box and made a generalization that the only way someone else could do a similar thing was by tampering with drugs.
Hofstadter then discusses the "me too " phenomenon. This is an unconscious process, in which people draw analogies from other peoples lives and relate it to their own. He gives a great example which is as follows:
Carol - I often forget my last name, still.
Peter - How long have you been married now - nine months
Carol - About.
Peter - I have that trouble every year in January (referring to writing last years date)
Peter related his forgetting the date when the new year comes to Carol forgetting her last name, this makes me think how often humans really do this. Hofstadter says that the "me too" phenomenon defines thought and I can see why he would say that.
Lastly, he discusses how his prevoius findings in the math world helped him better understand theoretical solid-state physics, which came to him as a surprise. It's very interesting when two things relate to eachother when you least expect it, this applies to everything, not just math and physics.
Hofstadter goes on to discuuss what he calls 'conceptual spheres' which he describes as being a family of concepts that lie in our collective consciousness that applies to a central concept. He then generalizes it saying that conceptual spheres don't apply just in mathematics but in everyday thought. An example of one of these conceptual spheres coming into existence involves the "Tylenol murders" that took place in Chicago. Someone planting poisonous pills in bottles of Tylenol which were consumed by custumors who were then poisoned to death. The FDA, in response to this, established new rules and regulations pertaining to drug packaging. The FDA thought very narrowly, as they did not extend the new regulations beyond the domain of drugs. It is as if the FDA's thought process was trapped in a box and made a generalization that the only way someone else could do a similar thing was by tampering with drugs.
Hofstadter then discusses the "me too " phenomenon. This is an unconscious process, in which people draw analogies from other peoples lives and relate it to their own. He gives a great example which is as follows:
Carol - I often forget my last name, still.
Peter - How long have you been married now - nine months
Carol - About.
Peter - I have that trouble every year in January (referring to writing last years date)
Peter related his forgetting the date when the new year comes to Carol forgetting her last name, this makes me think how often humans really do this. Hofstadter says that the "me too" phenomenon defines thought and I can see why he would say that.
Lastly, he discusses how his prevoius findings in the math world helped him better understand theoretical solid-state physics, which came to him as a surprise. It's very interesting when two things relate to eachother when you least expect it, this applies to everything, not just math and physics.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Dynamic Sequences 55-70
In the beginning of this section, he discusses how it is difficult to state the rules of some of the sequences, especially when there is a dynamic growth or 'moving parts'. The idea of having dynamic parts in the explanation of how a sequence works really makes me think of how extremely complex and confusing some of these rules can get. He then goes on to say that he will not use computers to represent the rules of the sequence. Hofstadter gives his reasoning for this in this next quote, "...the more carefully I thought about the challenge of making variations on a theme, the more deeply I realized that computer programs are extremely inflexible entities...".
He then discusses analogies and their importance. he believes that analogy-making is the heart pattern perception, and that it would follow that analogy-making is the heart of intellgence. I would draw from this that perhaps a program that could make analogous relationships between numbers may have some intelligence. It doesn't seem impossible to make a computer program that could do such a thing, maybe one already got made somewhere, who knows?
He then discusses analogies and their importance. he believes that analogy-making is the heart pattern perception, and that it would follow that analogy-making is the heart of intellgence. I would draw from this that perhaps a program that could make analogous relationships between numbers may have some intelligence. It doesn't seem impossible to make a computer program that could do such a thing, maybe one already got made somewhere, who knows?
Intelligence Knows Nothing 35-55
In pages 35 to 55 of Hofstadter's book, he discusses come very interesting things. He starts off by talking about how his own strategy for constructing an intelligent program appeared to have a flaw in it. He states that there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence. In his attempt to make an intelligent program, he stuffed it full of sophisticated math, which really didn't make it intelligent at all. Hofstadter tells of his ideas of intelligence in this quote, "Of course some domain knowledge is neccessary to get off the ground , but I had very deep intuitions to the effect that intelligence has - and has to have - a powerful, general, and abstract knowledge-independent core."
Another interesting thing he talks about is how one perceives things cann affect their ability to see and not see certain sequences. Hofstadter talks about how in one particular sequence of numbers the way he was used to looking at things hurt him when he tried to find a sequence, he explains that in this quote, "Specifically, the two idetical numbers "wanted", in my mind, to be kept together, so it took considerable external pressure to knock me out of this default way of seeing things." This shows that looking at things from different angles can be very beneficial sometimes.
Something else I found very interesting was a problem he presented, in which he gave the first three numbers of a sequence, then asked if you could guess which number came next. The pattern was 0,1,2..., most people would probably guess 3, but the answer is 720 factorial, he explains how and it makes perfect sense. I really liked this problem.
Another interesting thing he talks about is how one perceives things cann affect their ability to see and not see certain sequences. Hofstadter talks about how in one particular sequence of numbers the way he was used to looking at things hurt him when he tried to find a sequence, he explains that in this quote, "Specifically, the two idetical numbers "wanted", in my mind, to be kept together, so it took considerable external pressure to knock me out of this default way of seeing things." This shows that looking at things from different angles can be very beneficial sometimes.
Something else I found very interesting was a problem he presented, in which he gave the first three numbers of a sequence, then asked if you could guess which number came next. The pattern was 0,1,2..., most people would probably guess 3, but the answer is 720 factorial, he explains how and it makes perfect sense. I really liked this problem.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Hidden Agendas 0-35
The beginning of this book is concerned with computer programs that can locate sequences that are hidden in integer patterns. He discusses many hidden sequences that lie in particular patterns of integers. Some sequences were easy to understand, and some were worded and/or presented in such a way that didn't make much sense to me. However, after reading about all these hidden sequences that lied in these integer patterns, it really made me think. I started thinking that there may be some hidden sequence not in just integer patterns, but in patterns of events that occur in people's lives. Perhaps if we found the essence of the sequence that existed among life events maybe we could somehow predict events before they happen, but that is a very abstract thought. Hofstadter also says that scientists and Mathematicians often draw conclusions off of insufficient evidence, and he will not be guilty of that, he wants to thoroughly test and re-test his findings to make sure that they are true. I can't wait to read on and discover whatelse Hofstadter believes and what else he has discovered. I also found it very interesting that he talked about the Fibonacci sequence and that he used this to determine if there was a sequence in integer patterns. I find this interesting because that is the ratio in which plants and animals grow, it is also known as the "golden mean ratio".
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