Can you raed this? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rescheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
Now, a computer would have a very hard time with this, but as a native English speaker I read this with ease. As Marvin Minsky has pointed out (no relation to Hyman), computers still can't tell the difference between a dog and a cat, something my 3 year old daughter does with ease. The theme of Godel, Escher, Bach by Doug Hofstadter is that the mind is insanely good at finding patterns, and what is easy for us can be really difficult logically, and what is hard for us is easy for computers.
When I'm peevish, I'm amazed how how stupid most people are, how little original thought is created and appreciated, how faux rigor from false assumptions does not overcome them, how many phonies there are. But then, I remember stuff like this, and think that most us are quite clever.
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