[r-t] Man and machine

[Simon Humphrey]

> Mark Davies wrote:
>  > I think a composer's brain eliminates nodes, as you say.
Hmm, I didn't mean to imply a human brain actually searches composition
trees by magically fast-forwarding somehow from node to node, like a
speeded-up computer search. 
The brain seems able (on a good day!) to just not bother considering certain
nodes at all if they don't "feel" right; because of past experience,
intuition, pattern-matching, or whatever.  Thus reducing the search space
from maybe billions of entities to a relatively tiny and hopefully
manageable number.
Of course, this means the brain can all too easily reject parts of the
search space which actually do contain useful stuff.  Which is where
computers, potentially, come in: grinding through all x trillion nodes they
should (eventually) uncover everything.
The problem is, as the "big search" thread discussed, some computer searches
could take billions of years to execute.  If it was possible to incorporate
human "experience, intuition, pattern-matching" into the search algorithms
somehow, the search time could potentially be reduced to a realistic period.
Though at the risk, of course, of missing things in the same way as a human.
I feel there's a strong analogy here with the differences in the way humans
and computers play chess.  

Don Morrison wrote: 
> [lots of stuff including]
> I strongly disagree. 
I rather agree with Don!

SH