9. What is the Moscow of New York?

Douglas Hofstadter in his book "Creative Analogies and Fluid Concepts" presents the "new" set of problems that appear to require "human" reasoning.

IBM's Deep Blue may soon reign supreme in the realm of chess, but there are still things that we have a hard time formulating in such a fashion as to even imagine how a computer would answer the question.

Analogies are a wonderful example, and the question: "What is the Moscow of New York?" displays the problem quite nicely.

If we wish to come up with the "thing" in New York that is most "analogous" to Moscow, there are several plausible answers, each of which answers it in a different way:

• There is, in fact, a small town in northern New York State named Moscow.

  Software that searches databases for municipalities that are "nearest matches" from a textual perspective might find this answer. Most would probably agree that this isn't a very good answer. Only the name is the same.

• If there is a sizable community of Russians in New York City (which is likely), this area might be known as "Little Russia" or "Little Moscow."

  Unfortunately, this doesn't particularly compare to the Russian Moscow; it is really only analogous to the country/people of Russia.

• Moscow is the state capital of Russia, and Albany is the state capital of New York.

  If we are considering Moscow as the seat of political power, then this is probably a good answer. Although if we consider power/influence, the answer may change...

• Moscow is the "cosmopolitan/commercial/cultural/power" centre of Russia; New York City would seem to be the nearest equivalent.

  I would judge this to be the best analogy thus far, and the best answer overall. But this isn't the end of the story...

• Despite the fact that the State Capitol is in Albany, the financial and commercial power/influence in NYC surely has a great deal of influence within the State of New York.

  New York City may therefore be a better analogy than Albany for the "seat of power" analogy even though it is not legally the seat of power, and Albany is.

  This strengthens the "Big Apple" hold on the position.

• Rochester might get an entry because its geographical position within the State of New York is similar to that of Moscow within Russia.

• A counterargument to NYC's "Moscowness" is that it is a sea port, whilst Moscow is not.

But wait! Were we talking about "New York, the State," or "New York, the City?" The original statement was not clear. We must enter into the "sweepstakes:"

• Manhattan, the "influence/financial" capital within NYC, with the counterargument that it's an island, whilst Moscow is not.

• If there's a cultural area of "Little Russia/Little Moscow," it may enter again, with roughly the same counterarguments as before.

Overall, I would judge New York City to be the "most analogous" city to Moscow in New York. There isn't a methodology at this point out there to model this in such a way as to generalize it so as to embed it in an "Artificial Intelligence" system. That's a hard problem, and Hofstadter's book discusses this in more detail. (Although he spends more time trying to figure out the "Chicago of Russia.")