fritts@AFOTEC.ARPA (09/22/86)
The remark has been made on AIList, I think, and elsewhere that computers do not "think" at all like people do. Problems are formally stated and stepped through sequentially to reach a solution. Humans find this very difficult to do. Instead, we seem to think in a series of observations and associations. Our observations are provided by our senses, but how these are associated with stored memory of other observations is seemingly the key to how humans "think". I think that this process of sensory observation and association runs more or less continuously and we are not conciously aware of much of it. What I'd like to know is how the decision is made to associate one observation with another; what rules of association are made and are they highly individualized or is there a more general pattern. How is it that we acquire large bodies of apparently diverse observations under simple labels and then make complex decisions using these simple labels rather than stepping laboriously through a logical sequence to achieve the same end? There must be some logic to our associative process or we could not be discussing this subject at all. Steve Fritts FRITTS@AFOTEC ------