pgs 87-95.

Doug Hofstadter spends a bit of time talking about his work on the LISP program JUMBO, which was an anagram solver. A very interesting mention is made of his conceptual idea of the parallel terraced scan, which is a strategy used by a program to detect properties up the scale of a schema. These scales each have the ability to pattern match alongside the bottom-level program which is actually running the entire time. This provides one with the ability to conserve computer resources (or brain energy) by only running modules when the time is right (as in .. when the preconditions are met).

This scaling reminds me of the screaming demons architecture I learned about back in Cog166. The model went as follows: there is a set of demons which will scream when a specific symbol is cast before them, furthermore, there is a set of demons which will scream when a specific set of demons beneath them is screaming ... you can see the bottom-up approach visually. But those second-third-whatever level demons would only activate any screaming when the lower level gave them a specific input. I am reminded more, now, of a tree structure in computer science ... with the root giving me the answer I needed. I know that's not quite right for most data structures, but the visualization seems to fit here. My closing comment on this reading is this: the mind appears to work as a cluster of chaos that quickly can organize itself into something meaningful.