[mod.ai] Associations -- Comment on AIList Digest V4 #186

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
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