An implementation of Douglas Hofstadter and Melanie Mitchell's Copycat algorithm. The Copycat algorithm is explained on Wikipedia, in Melanie Mitchell's Book Analogy-making as perception, and in this paper. The wikipedia page has additional links for deeper reading. See also FARGonautica, where a collection of Fluid Concepts projects are available.
This implementation is a copycat of Scott Boland's Java implementation. The original Java-to-Python translation work was done by J Alan Brogan (@jalanb on GitHub). The Java version has a GUI similar to the original Lisp; this Python version has no GUI code built in but can be incorporated into a larger GUI program.
J. Alan Brogan writes:
In cases where I could not grok the Java implementation easily, I took ideas from the LISP implementation, or directly from Melanie Mitchell's book "Analogy-Making as Perception".
To clone the repo locally, run these commands:
$ git clone https://github.com/fargonauts/copycat.git
$ cd copycat/copycat
$ python main.py abc abd ppqqrr --iterations 10
The script takes three or four arguments. The first two are a pair of strings with some change, for example "abc" and "abd". The third is a string which the script should try to change analogously. The fourth (which defaults to "1") is a number of iterations.
This might produce output such as
ppqqss: 6 (avg time 869.0, avg temp 23.4)
ppqqrs: 4 (avg time 439.0, avg temp 37.3)
The first number indicates how many times Copycat chose that string as its answer; higher means "more obvious". The last number indicates the average final temperature of the workspace; lower means "more elegant".
This Copycat system consists of 4,981 lines of Python code across 40 files. Here's a breakdown.
Core Components:
- codeletMethods.py: 1,124 lines (largest file)
- curses_reporter.py: 436 lines
- coderack.py: 310 lines
- slipnet.py: 248 lines
Workspace Components:
- group.py: 237 lines
- bond.py: 211 lines
- correspondence.py: 204 lines
- workspace.py: 195 lines
- workspaceObject.py: 194 lines
Control Components:
- temperature.py: 175 lines
- conceptMapping.py: 153 lines
- rule.py: 149 lines
- copycat.py: 144 lines
GUI Components:
- gui/gui.py: 96 lines
- gui/workspacecanvas.py: 70 lines
- gui/status.py: 66 lines
- gui/control.py: 59 lines
The system is well-organized with clear separation of concerns:
- Core logic (codelets, coderack, slipnet)
- Workspace management (groups, bonds, correspondences)
- Control systems (temperature, rules)
- User interface (GUI components)
The largest file, codeletMethods.py, contains all the codelet behavior implementations, which makes sense as it's the heart of the system's analogical reasoning capabilities.
We've got an LLM to document every code file, so people can look at a particular readme before delving into the work (Here's one Example).
To install the Python module and get started with it, run these commands:
$ pip install -e git+git://github.com/fargonauts/copycat.git#egg=copycat
$ python
>>> from copycat import Copycat
>>> Copycat().run('abc', 'abd', 'ppqqrr', 10)
{'ppqqrs': {'count': 4, 'avgtime': 439, 'avgtemp': 37.3}, 'ppqqss': {'count': 6, 'avgtime': 869, 'avgtemp': 23.4}}
The result of run is a dict containing the same information as was printed by main.py above.