Introducing Numbo

In this section of the Hofstadter’s book “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies”, Hofstadter includes Daniels Defay’s “Numbo: A Study in Cognition and Recognition”. In the first section of Defay’s article on Numbo, he summarizes as set of observations made during the Numble examples as: “The amount of knowledge available determines the nature of the strategy followed”. I believe that the statement is true enough, for almost everything that humans do in day to day life. But I think what really draws me to the statement is the fact that a statement as simple as this unless directly brought attention to is something that humans do without realizing that they are doing it. By bring attention to the common place and everyday it makes analyzing problems easier and the process by which the solutions are formed less complicated to note and understand. And may implore one to think about the processes that he or she takes in thinking and problem solving.

The problem solving process and thinking about the methods in which humans solve problems I think is an area that will greatly help the future of artificial intelligence. It reminds me of Hofstadter’s explanation about why he designed Jumbo the way he did. I believe he made comment of something like it wasn’t whether or not Jumbo could come up with a real word but the process in which Jumbo took to form the word. Which in hindsight is why Jumbo wasn’t encoded with a dictionary but used letters, gloms, and codelets. It will be interesting to see how Numbo and Jumbo compare on a process basis.