[r-t] Man and machine

[Mark Davies]

Hmm, I think Don and Simon are misunderstanding me. By saying "a human brain
eliminates nodes" I mean exactly what both of you do - that a composer finds
solutions joining say course A to course B without calculating all possible 
combinations of calls between. For instance, Don describes "shuffling things 
about willy-nilly" trying to join up two bits of a composition; that can be 
considered some kind of pruning algorithm - only looking at bits of the 
search tree that intuition or luck or random thought deem appropriate.

Don also writes,

> Curiously, the computer seems also to be particularly good at thinking
> "outside the box."

Absolutely - sometimes human intuition and experience is wrong, and there
are new ways of achieving things that the computer finds for us. All part of
the partnership. ;-)

MBD