A general framework for abstract concepts
April 8, 2025 12:38 AM Subscribe
Humans possess the remarkable ability to flexibly acquire and apply abstract concepts when interpreting the concrete world around us. Consider the concept "maze": our mental model can interpret mazes constructed with conventional materials (e.g., drawn lines) or unconventional ones (e.g., icing), and reason about mazes across a wide range of configurations and environments (e.g., in a cardboard box or on a knitted square). Our goal is to build systems that can make such flexible and broad generalizations as humans do. This necessitates a reconsideration of a fundamental question: what makes a maze look like a maze?
Borges is rightly celebrated for his takes on mazes. How about a shout out for the late Michael Ayrton, mostly an artist, but also responsible for the novel the Maze Maker, and the design of the Arkville Maze in New York, discussed here?
posted by BWA at 4:46 AM on April 8 [5 favorites]
posted by BWA at 4:46 AM on April 8 [5 favorites]
A long time ago -- I'm pretty sure it was on Apple ][e's -- a computer BASIC nerd friend of mine had transcribed a maze generating program from some magazine, which we'd print out and attempt to solve.
The thing is: it was far from perfect, I'm not sure what algorithm it used to ensure there was a winning path, and you could just tell from looking at one whether it was solvable or not. It was a sort of weird deep sensation, like you could smell a non-maze maze. Sometimes we were wrong, but as far as I can remember it was a pretty successful detection system.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:32 AM on April 8
The thing is: it was far from perfect, I'm not sure what algorithm it used to ensure there was a winning path, and you could just tell from looking at one whether it was solvable or not. It was a sort of weird deep sensation, like you could smell a non-maze maze. Sometimes we were wrong, but as far as I can remember it was a pretty successful detection system.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:32 AM on April 8
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Tolman [wiki] coined the term cognitive map, which is an internal representation (or image) of an external environmental feature or landmark [simplypsychology]
posted by HearHere at 1:40 AM on April 8 [1 favorite]