Definition
Concept slippage is Douglas Hofstadter's term for the cognitive operation in which a concept mutates into a neighboring concept under contextual pressure. The canonical example: "abc" maps to "abd" by replacing the rightmost letter with its successor. Apply the same rule to "iijjkk": a rigid system gives "iijjkll"; a flexible system slips "letter" to "group" and gives "iijjll." Slippage is the moment when one concept can be substituted for a neighbor.
Why it matters
How it works
Each concept lives in a "slipnet" — a graph of related concepts with weighted edges. Pressure from context (the problem at hand) can activate edges and shift active concepts to neighbors. "Letter" slips to "group" when the input contains repeated letters; "successor" slips to "predecessor" when the surrounding pattern is descending. The slippage is competition-driven: many candidate slips evaluate in parallel, and the winner is determined by coherence with the overall representation.