Introduction to Jumbo

In this section of the book, from page 87 to 95, Hofstadter introduces the reader to the basic ideas of his Jumbo project. He talks much about anagrams and discusses the types of methods used for solving them. He focuses on the idea that these thought processes are not actually something that happens consciously, but happen under the surface, at least for people solving these problems at an expert level--not novices uses a brute-force approach.

He also discusses the issues of perception of words while reading, and how it is surprising that people do not make more mistakes in grouping letters in a given word, given that the process may be fairly complex if one actually thinks about all of the possible ways the letters of any word can be perceived.

This all reminded me of something I read a long time ago about reading, although it is not quite the same idea:

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in what order the ltteers in a word are, the only iprmoatnt thing is that the frist and lsat ltteer msut be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae the human mind deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe."

I always thought this was interesting, and I think it somehow connects to the mental processes he is discussing in the book. In fact, it almost seems to go against what he is discussing, in that it completely dismisses the idea that the mind actually even processes the groupings of letters at all.