Metacat: a computer model of analogy-making and perception (2016)

science.slc.edu

28 pointsjessup4 comments

I don't even know where to begin trying to use this for something, but other than that it seems brilliant, and it is not at all surprising that Douglas Hofstadter had some hand in it.

Agree. Perhaps, if nothing else, to read some interesting Scheme source code.

It's pure cognitive science research exploring ideas about analogies. It's not intended to be used for anything practical.

Hofstadter's approach in copycat, letter spirit etc. comes from his physics background. If you want to understand high level cognition, start with extremely tiny toy domain and work things out there.

Hofstader's work is brilliant and it's culminated in the book 'Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies'. Unfortunately he has not produced anything interesting since (maybe due to his personal tragedy). He just says the same things more poetically.

Metacat is also the name of a Netflix open source project. https://github.com/Netflix/metacat

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