Human vs. Numbo

In the last part of chapter three in Douglas Hofstadter’s book Fluid Concepts, Daniel Defays details the similarities of the Numbo program, creating and computing number problems, to the human method of the same task. The Numbo programs essential task in this manner was to shed light on the understanding of how humans exhibit mental fluidity and smooth processing in determining the solutions to such numeric problems. The author explains that a strict comparison of the Numbo program and human performance is not possible at this time due to many differences between the two. The most profound reason for denying a strict comparison is the difference in the knowledge base between humans and the program, followed by a lack of human characteristics within the program, such as taking into consideration the linear order of available elements. Lastly, the design of Numbo’s architecture did not exhibit the importance of numeric relationships and the measureable degree of similarity between numbers that most humans demonstrate almost subconsciously. Thinking about the major differences between Numbo and humans taking in to account these numeric problems makes me think that human perception and subconscious thought might have a role in all of this.

The Numbo program, in my mind, does not exhibit the complex perceptual qualities and pattern recognition as we humans do in this case, this aspect is perhaps arguable by some people, but nonetheless Numbo does have certain qualities of pattern recognition. Through our experience and basic mathematical learning it seems we humans have a decent amount of pattern recognition and simple computational qualities subconsciously built in to our brain processes. This would be very difficult for a computer program to duplicate, but is likely possible in the near future due to exponential growth of technology. The first logical step would be for a machine to experience and learn, somehow bettering itself, to acquire such abilities that humans’ exhibit pertaining to the computation and immediate pattern recognition of these particular mathematical problems. To concretely define these human processes of learning and computation, in this case, seems to be the bigger and more immediate milestone than determining how a machine or program processes such data. The author makes a similar point in saying that human protocols are highly questionable and not well defined, for it is extremely difficult to keep track of every single process a human completes when solving a similar Numbo problem.