Reading my Friend of a Friends list, I saw the following posting:
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 30 plepoe so far on mapysce can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rsceearh at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs rpsoet it. OLNY RPSOET IF YOU CAN RAED TIHS… UATPDE THE NBUMER
This is why spam gets past your filters, and why no filtering program can easily stop spam on its lonesome. The human mind can perceive variations of a word that are pretty far from the original and still identify it. Filtering is mechanical.
This is noted in the book Inversions by Scott Kim. Douglas Hofstader (of “Godel, Esher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” fame) said in his introduction:
“I have always been astounded by the fact that when people read, they gulp up words as wholes, somehow almost bypassing the letter level–almost as if they could read words without the need to to have the letters there at all! The letters in a word form such a tight community that one grows used to the community independent of the individuals that compose it.”
Kim notes also that: “The great variety of type styles we see in print has trained us to recognize many different shapes as a single letter”.
So, the next time you get spam, and can figure out what it is saying despite the mispellings, thank the power of your mind. You’re doing something most machines can’t do.
