October 2009
6 posts
Microdomains
Hofstadter talks about how the ability for computers to model the high level perception of the real world is not currently possible. He however says that using a microdomain is allowable. On page 190 he he says restricted domains can be the source of much insight. What I don’t understand is that Hoftstadter seems to not like the use of a computer program making an analogy between heat flow...
Slips
I enjoyed the preface to chapter 5, more specifically the part Hofstadter talks about slips of the tongue or as he calls them word blends or substitution errors. These happen to everybody and isn’t seen as too big of a deal that we say something that makes no sense such as “Close your cookie jars, please” when referring to toy chests. This not only happens in speech,...
Eliza Effect
I enjoyed the section of the book that described the Eliza Effect. Which is when people read to much into what a computer displays or does and gives it more credit then it probably should.
For example the web site I use to host my blog, Tumblr, has a large image stating “Welcome Back” on its homepage. Thinking the site has any actual meaning behind displaying it would be falling to...
Not Perfect
At the end of chapter 3 Daniel Defays, creator of Numbo discusses the weaknesses of the architecture of Numbo. Numbo, to my understanding, only works towards a goal as it will create “blocks” which are the combination of “bricks” in order to get closer to the goal.
Daniel states that Numbo has some difficulty with some simple problems, one such problem is {Target =...
Numbo
Chapter 3 consists of Daniel Defays discussing his program Numbo which he worked with Hofstadter on. Numbo is similar to Jumbo, hence the name. Numbo is very similar to the crypto problems which we have been working on in class. The only difference between the two is a Numbo problem does not need to use all the bricks for it to be considered solved where a crypto problem does.
The reason for...
Backtracking
Throughout the second half of chapter 2, Hofstadter talks about how his Jumbo program reacts when its gone down the wrong path to a word and how it decides when to move backwards a step or two when it can’t go any farther and when to go back to the beginning.
Reading this I recalled when I was working on a programming assignment and was having difficulty finishing it. First I had first...
September 2009
6 posts
Terraced Scans
On page 106 Hofstadter talks about the concept of terraced scans. He defines a terraced scan as a “parallel investigation of many possibilities to different levels of depth, quickly throwing out the bad ones and homing in rapidly and accurately on good ones.” He gives the example of a person looking for a book to read won’t start at the first book on the first shelf and read the...
blo-gpos-t
The part of the last reading that intrigued me the most was Hofstadter discussing the interesting things when words are split into “chunks”. If I saw a sign that read “N. Concord Rd.” nothing would have jumped out at me that anything very special was happening, besides the fact that I was driving on a road named North Concord. Hofstadter however immediately knew something...
Bridges
I found it interesting when Hoftstadter talks about “Conceptual Spheres”. At the center of a conceptual sphere is an event that happened and its surrounding layers are variants of this event. Over time this sphere will shrink and people’s memories will also decrease. He talks about why only the most similar things are affected by the event, be it interstate bridges, female tennis players, and...
Computers playing chess
On page 53 Hofstadter relates programs that figure out patterns to computers that play chess. He says neither really use the same methods that a human would in the same task. So I’d like to discuss how computers play chess and are capable of beating world champion chess players.
Computers that play chess are programmed to do what is called alpha-beta pruning. This is a method of...
Correctness in musical patterns
After Douglas Hofstadter had thought he had done everything he could in finding patterns in numerical sequences he decided to look into music as a source of patterns. He states that music is perhaps more knowledge intensive then mathematics is. While it may take more knowledge in the field of music to know what works well and what doesn’t in music in the way of sounding pleasent to the ear then...
Almost Perfect
On page 19 in the first paragraph, Douglas talks about a possible solution for a pattern that he tried to figure out when he was around the age of 16. He says that while “Mathgod” prefers a perfect pattern to a non 100% perfect pattern.
I don’t agree with his idea of that in a pattern that if the first element doesn’t follow the rest of the pattern then you can just...