Tightrope walking inexperienced funambulists will often walk barefoot so that the wire can be grasped between the big and second toe. This is more often done when using a rope, as the softer and silkier fibres are less taxing on the bare foot than the harder and more abrasive braided wire. The word "funambulism" or the phrase ""walking a tightrope"" is also used in a metaphorical setting not referring to any actual acrobatic acts. For instance, politicians are said to "walk a tightrope" when trying to balance two opposing views with little room for compromise. The term can also be used in
How to Create a Mind a hierarchy. For example, to recognize a written word there might be several pattern recognizers for each different letter stroke: diagonal, horizontal, vertical or curved. The output of these recognizers would feed into higher level pattern recognizers, which look for the pattern of strokes which form a letter. Finally a word-level recognizer uses the output of the letter recognizers. All the while signals feed both "forward" and "backward". For example, if a letter is obscured, but the remaining letters strongly indicate a certain word, the word-level recognizer might suggest to the letter-recognizer which letter to look for, and the letter-level