Marc Walser wrote: >>> *Any* human who can understand language beyond a certain point (say, that of
a slightly sub-average human IQ) can easily be taught to be a good scientist if they are willing to play along. Science is a rote process that can be learned and executed by anyone -- as long as their beliefs and biases don't get in the way. <<< This is just an opinion and I strongly disagree with your opinion. Obviously you overestimate language understanding a lot. >>> This is a bit of disingenuous side-track that I feel that I must address. When people say "natural language", the important features are extensibility and ambiguity. If you can handle one extensible and ambiguous language, you should have the capabilities to handle all of them. It's yet another definition of GI-complete. Just look at it as yet another example of dealing competently with ambiguous and incomplete data (which is, at root, all that intelligence is). <<< You use your personal definition of natural language. I don't think that human's are intelligent because they use an ambiguous language. They also would be intelligent if their language would not suffer from ambiguities. >>> One thought module, two translation modules -- except that all the translation modules really are is label appliers and grammar re-arrangers. The heavy lifting is all in the thought module. The problem is that you are claiming that language lies entirely in the translation modules while I'm arguing that a large percentage of it is in the thought module. The fact that the translation module has to go to the thought module for disambiguation and interpretation (and numerous other things) should make it quite clear that language is *not* simply translation. <<< It is still just translation. >>> Further, if you read Pinker's book, you will find that languages have a lot more in common than you would expect if language truly were independent of and separate from thought (as you are claiming). Language is built on top of the thinking/cognitive architecture (not beside it and not independent of it) and could not exist without it. That is why language is AGI-complete. Language also gives an excellent window into many of the features of that cognitive architecture and determining what is necessary for language also determine what is in that cognitive architecture. Another excellent window is how humans perform moral judgments (try reading Marc Hauser -- either his numerous scientific papers or the excellent Moral Minds). Or, yet another, is examining the structure of human biases. <<< There are also visual thoughts. You can imagine objects moving. The principle is the same as with thoughts you perceive in your language: There is an internal representation of patterns which is completely hidden for your consciousness. The brain compresses and translates your visual thoughts and routes the results to its own visual input regions. As long as there is no real evidence against the model that thoughts are separated from the way I perceive thoughts (e.g. by language )I do not see any reason to change my opinion. - Matthias ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
