p.548 In the traditional sciences, it has rarely been thought necessary to discuss in any explicit kind
of way the processes that are involved in perception and analysis. For in most cases all that one studies are rather simple
features that can readily be extracted by very straightforward processes... as soon as one tries to investigate behavior
of any substantial complexity, the processes of perception and analysis that one needs to use are no longer so straightforward.
And the results that one gets can then depend on these processes.
p.548 In everyday life we are continually bombarded by huge amounts of data, in the form
of images, sounds, and so on. To be able to make use of this data we must reduce it to more manageable proportions.
And this is what perception and analysis attempt to do. Their role in effect is to take large volumes of raw data and extract
from it summaries that we can use.
p.549 There are many forms of perception and analysis... the basic goal in all cases is the same: to reduce
raw data to a useful summary form.
Such a summary is important whenever one wants to... make meaningful extrapolations or predictions
based on data.
p.557 In everyday language, when we say that something seems complex what we typically mean is that
we have not managed to find any simple description of it - or at least those features of it in which we happen to
be interested. But the goal of perception and analysis is precisely to find such descriptions, so when we say that
something seems complex, what we are effectively saying is that our powers of perception and analysis have failed on it.
p.558 In this chapter I argue that essentially all common forms of perception and analysis correspond to
rather simple programs.
p.632 any method of perception or analysis can at some level be viewed as a way of trying to find simple
descriptions for pieces of data... it is rather common for rules that have extremely simple descriptions to give rise to data
that is highly complex.
