>> > I don't think the proofs depend on any special assumptions about >> the > nature of learning. >> >> I beg to differ. IIRC the sense of "learning" they require is >> induction over example sentences. They exclude the use of real >> world knowledge, in spite of the fact that such knowledge (or at >> least <primitives involved in the development of real world >> knowledge>) are posited to play a significant role in the learning >> of grammar in humans. As such, these proofs say nothing whatsoever >> about the learning of NL grammars. >>
I fully agree the proofs don't take into account such stuff. And I believe such stuff is critical. Thus I've never claimed language learning was proved hard, I've just suggested evolution could have encrypted it. The point I began with was, if there are lots of different locally optimal codings for thought, it may be hard to figure out which one is programamed into the mind, and thus language learning could be a hard additional problem to producing an AGI. The AGI has to understand what the word "foobar" means, and thus it has to have (or build) a code module meaning ``foobar" that it can invoke with this word. If it has a different set of modules, it might be sunk in communication. My sense about grammars for natural language, is that there are lots of different equally valid grammars that could be used to communicate. For example, there are the grammars of English and of Swahili. One isn't better than the other. And there is a wide variety of other kinds of grammars that might be just as good, that aren't even used in natural language, because evolution chose one convention at random. Figuring out what that convention is, is hard, at least Linguists have tried hard to do it and failed. And this grammar stuff is pretty much on top of, the meanings of the words. It serves to disambiguate, for example for error correction in understanding. But you could communicate pretty well in pidgin, without it, so long as you understand the meanings of the words. The grammar learning results (as well as the experience of linguists, who've tried very hard to build a model for natural grammar) I think, are indicative that this problem is hard, and it seems that this problem is superimposed above the real world knowledge aspect. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
