To Arthur!

First off, Happy To Arthur Guinness day! In this weeks assigned reading, Douglas Hofstadter talks about his artificial-intelligence research project called Jumbo. Jumbo’s purpose is to act like a human who is trying to solve a Jumble problem by taking a group of letters, then trying to take the letters and make it so that it can seek an English word out of the given letters.

Hofstadter did not give Jumbo a dictionary, because he thought that it defeated the purpose of what he was trying to replicate, in essence, human thought processes. What he did was give Jumbo instructions on how the English language makes its constructions, such as how consonant and vowel clusters are formed out of letters, syllables out of clusters, and words out of syllables. This immediately made me think of John Searle’s Chinese room argument, and made me think if Jumbo could really show some sort of human like intelligence, or an understanding of what it actually was doing.

I think Hofstadter was going in the correct direction when he was designing Jumbo and his thoughts and ideas that are there are very good. However, there is always the slight bit of doubt that an artificial-intelligence program is merely doing the work, but still does not have an understanding of what it is doing. I look forward to reading more about Jumbo to see the outcome of Hofstadter’s program.

Jumble

Word jumbles have been my arch enemy for quite some time now, along with crossword puzzles and sudoku. In the reading from pages 87-95, Hofstadter talks a great deal about anagrams and his attempt at writing a computer program that attempts to make "...English-like words out of a set of letters by rearranging them and putting them into plausible order."

Hofstadter talks about how he has enjoyed solving Jumbles for quite some time. I on the other hand have not had great luck in anagrams even though I do enjoy them. His Jumbo program seems like an interesting program, but I feel as though it'd be a very difficult program to write. After reading about how there were brute-force anagram programs that used abridged dictionaries, I was more interested on Hofstadter's take on how he would accomplish this goal. It seems to me that there would be a plethora of answers for a particular set of letters when doing an anagram with one of these brute-force programs, or even with his Jumbo program. He does have a great interest in human cognition and he does state that this is a problem and that it this is the reason why he does not like the brute-force programs.

After reading this section I thought about when I was taking Linguistics 100 a few years ago. How there are so many difficult rules in the English language and how his Jumbo program could decipher all of the different rules that the English language carried. It only makes me think that there could be mistakes somewhere down the line just like the human language.

Ambiguous

I found that the section that we were assigned to read by Hofstadter was a little confusing at some points, but this was only due to the nature of his writing style. Like a normal conversation Hofstadter jumps from point to point and also goes on a miniature rant about conceptual spheres. Where people take a primary concept and they then take this concept and spread it to a conceptual space that is shared by many other individuals. I thought this was a very interesting topic that Hofstadter points out, and he only makes that even better when he expands his idea into the realm of grammar and logic.

Hofstadter talks about generalizations and how they spread outwards from a conceptual centerpiece. When we read or hear something we tend to take this and apply it and relate it in some way or form to things that have happened in our own lives. I find this interesting and he example of the “Me-Too” phenomenon and his examples. The one example that I really enjoyed was when he stated an exchange of words between people named Shelley and Tim:

Shelley: I’m going to pay for my beer now.

Tim: Me, Too.

Tim’s reply in itself is ambiguous. There could be many interpretations that could steer someone off course and they might get the wrong impression. The great part about something like this is that we as humans use phrases like this everyday and do not think anything of it. We have taken our language and have used it to a new degree, where we can say things such as ambiguous statements and people can draw correct inferences from them and we can be on our merry way.

This also made me think about how this could make for a tough time in Artificial Intelligence programming. Human languages are so complex and have so many different phrases, uses, and tricks that it would be very difficult for a machine to pick up on some of these. I feel as though a phrase such as “get a hold of yourself”, or “get a grip” would cause a machine to sort of problems. It also made me think of Kim Peek and how he, one of the most unique and gifted individuals in the world, cannot understand the use of the phrases such as “get a hold of yourself.”

Analogy-Making Lies At The Heart Of Intelligence

The part of Hofstadter's book that I am going to be focusing on today came from his section entitled "The Key Role of Analogies" on page 62 of his book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies. In this section, Hofstadter begins to talk about how analogy-making is used in seeking out "Islands of Order" in pattern sequences (read page 58 for more details on Islands of Order).

This seemed to me like a very important concept in the daily lives of humans. When we look at everyday objects, numbers, or things of the like we either relate or differentiate between these things to make note of them within our minds.

This is a quote that I’d like to take from Hofstadter’s passage that I had enjoyed: “…pattern-finding is the core of intelligence, the implication is clear: analogy-making lies at the heart of intelligence. Yet these extremely simple ideas have seldom been stated in cognitive science, let alone explored in detail.” This reminded me of the research that I had done 2 summers ago when I was attending the URSI program at Vassar College with Professor Jan Andrews and Ken Livingston.

The research that I took part in was on Category Learning with the use of 3-D objects in a virtual world. The virtual world we used was Second Life. Hofstadter talked about how “Analogies vary not only in their degrees of salience but also in their degrees of strength.” I could not help but reminisce of doing research and how his ideas about analogies closely correlated with the ideas put forth in some of the research.

In the research that we did we had 2 sets of objects, a gex and a zof, that varied slightly from one another within their respected groups. We had extreme forms in both of the objects and we also had forms of each object that looked as though they crossed the threshold to where they looked the exact same when in actuality they did not. The participants would then go through a random order of these objects and try to categorize and choose which form the object was that they were looking at (either a gex or zof). This is where I saw the connection between Hofstadters looks on analogies and the research that I took part in.

Though the research did not include mathematical sequences I do believe that there is some sort of connect in a broader sense. I could keep going on this topic, but I know that I only have a set number of words that I am allowed to use in my blog entry for this class and I am really cutting it close to the amount of words that I’m using. I can post more on this topic later at some point if need be.

Music and Mathematical Patterns

In this blog entry I will basically be continuing what I was talking about from my first blog entry. Without reading further in the book until Wednesday night I stated that " It makes me think about other patterns that may be occurring within other aspects of our natural world." It made me happy to know that I was on the correct path and also on the same page as Hofstadter.

In the most recent section we were assigned to read Hofstadter talked about how he had stretched his love of patterns into the realm of music. This struck me by surprise. I've been involved with music since a young age and have known that many patterns had existed in music, but I had never even thought to look there for patterns. When I was thinking about the natural world and patterns that could be involved I seemed to have skipped over music all together. To add even more to this I was even listening to music while doing some of my reading and thinking.

Music is made up of patterns, which really makes music unique. Hofstadter points out that music can be put into a hierarchical system, where the notes are split into chunks. Reading about this made me really think about music in its entirety. How amazing and mysterious music can be, and how it too can be just as complicated as mathematical patterns.

I look forward to reading more of this book. Not only because we are merely "told" to read, but because Hofstadter takes a difficult and interesting topic and makes it so you can really understand what he is talking about in such a simple way.

Mathematical Patterns and Relationships

I'd like to first start off by saying how I really enjoy the style of writing that is used by Douglas Hofstadter in his book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies. It feels as though you're not reading a book, but rather sitting down and having a real talk with Hofstadter. I look forward to reading more of this book not only because of the topic, but also because of his very unique and down to earth writing style.

Hofstadter has a real love and knack for finding patterns within mathematics. His search for finding a pattern for the triangular numbers between the squares was very interesting. I never would have thought that there were such patterns that existed within the world of mathematics. I am not very keen at math, and I usually have little interest in mathematical problems. This problem however caught my attention. It's amazing how unique and mysterious math can be.

I find it incredible that such patterns could exist from different strings of integers. It only makes me wonder what other kinds of patterns there could be with other types of integers. These patterns don't necessarily have to just be confined to the mathematical world either. It makes me think about other patterns that may be occurring within other aspects of our natural world. Making it seem as though our world can all be related in some way in some form. It's a very interesting concept that Hofstadter put forth that really made me see new and interesting ideas about patterns, math, and the natural world.