ABSTRACT
The origins of the "clever tricks" are presumably to be found in stages of development that are prior to the emergence of spoken language. It has also been realized that the real brain embodies even more "clever tricks" than are known to workers in mainstream artificial intelligence (AI), so there is much interest in parallel distributed processing (PDP), with the explicit intention of investigating and modeling nervous system operation. It is recognized that the impressive computing power of the brain is due to its powerful implementation of PDP. Since the brain operates in a highly parallel fashion, discussions of parallel operation invariably evoke comparison with the nervous system. The applications of neural computing tend to utilize the forms of continuity referred to as obvious continuity, manifested in pattern classification and regulatory tasks. A great deal of confusion can be attributed to a curious reluctance to recognize the importance of continuity in intelligence.
