Its In The Context

One of the more important themes in this section of Hofstadter’s book is the theme of backtracking. I think that the idea of backtracking relates particularly well to the way that humans might solve a particular problem. For example a person driving from city A to city B, would start all the way back at city A if he or she gets lost along the way, he or she will back track to the most recent spot where they weren’t lost and from there proceed on to city B, this time hopefully on the right path.

However I do believe that there are times when starting from the beginning is the easier choice to make. I thought about this when Hofstadter was talking about unhappy gloms. Suppose, instead of gloms being composed of a grouping of letters that form words, the gloms are a grouping of words that form sentences. An author knows that the first sentence in any body of work is one of the most important sentences for that work. It is the sentence that hooks the reader to read further, so the author wants to get that first sentence right. During the editing process the author decides that the first sentence needs some work, now it could be that the gloms need to be rearranged or the order of the gloms needs to be changed. Or it could be that the first sentence is entirely removed and re-glommed to form a sentence that is much more effective.

I agree with Hofstadter in the context of Jumbo that the idea of backtracking may be the more intuitive approach to reform a word from gloms, and in fact may very well be the more intuitive approach to many problems solving situations. I do think that it is in the context of the problem to be solved whether or not backtracking or starting over is the easiest and best approach.