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From: Citizen Jimserac on 24 Dec 2009 14:42
I made a post some years ago (my user name at that time was Musashi)
regarding shape symbology and the quest for purely spatial
manipulation computational algorithmic substitutes as the possible
basis for a shape manipulation based automated and artificially
intelligent software design system. Lisp was one of the languages
under consideration: see the following link -

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/95a2473fc5b80de2/79ae2135e2e0cbdd?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=sort+apl2#79ae2135e2e0cbdd

I just wanted to throw out another addendum, from an unexpected
source, that such a thing might be possible.

Asberger's syndrome patient and known savant Daniel Tammet has written
a book a while ago which I just discovered ""Born on a Blue Day". In
it he describes some of his mental processes while doing the most
extraordinary purely mental computations. He appears to be unique in
that he can verbalize in some detail aspects of those mental
computations.

Apparently, he associates shapes with the numbers (most intriguingly
he finds prime numbers to have symmetric shapes) and, for example,
when multiplying two numbers, he imagines the shape of one number on
the left, the other on the right and then the intervening space
becomes filled with the shape of the answer which he then translates
back to a real number!

I'd give anything to know more details - this could be a path towards
a basis of the theoretical framework for which I have been searching,
so far, in vain.

Thanks
Citizen Jimserac (James Pannozzi)
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