In this section of the reading, Hofstadter continues to discuss the workings of his Jumbo project. The most interesting notion he brings up is how he incorporates a "temperature" into the system. Using the cell analogy, he discusses how the "cytoplasm" may incorporate a temperature, which serves as a quick global feedback to the state of the system. More precisely, it serves as a kind of barometer of the “happiness” of the gloms within this cytoplasm mixture.
The temperature is low, in fact, freezing, if there is only one single happy glom. The freezing analogy is great because the system does not break up the glom due to the fact that the cytoplasm is frozen. As expected, as the temperature increases, the chance of gloms dissolving increases. I just thought it was neat.
Hofstadter also discusses some classic illusions, relating to the fact that humans only perceive one possibility at a time, and citing things such as the vase-or-faces picture. Completely coincidentally, I was also recently shown a video on YouTube of a dancer’s silhouette that is meant to appear to be constantly spinning. However, the illusion is that it can be seen as the dancer spinning left, or the dancer spinning right. This particular example is very strong, because even after perceiving both possibilities, I was unable to make my perception change at will.
No comments:
Post a Comment