Hi. I don't understand the following statements. Could you explain it some
more?
- Natural language can be learned from examples. Formal language can not.
I think that you're basing this upon the methods that *you* would apply to each
of the types of language. It makes sense to me that because of the
regularities of a formal language that you would be able to use more effective
methods -- but it doesn't mean that the methods used on natural language
wouldn't work (just that they would be as inefficient as they are on natural
languages.
I would also argue that the same argument applies to the first statement of
following the following two.
- Formal language must be parsed before it can be understood. Natural language
must be understood before it can be parsed.
----- Original Message -----
From: Matt Mahoney
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 9:23 PM
Subject: Lojban (was Re: [agi] constructivist issues)
Why would anyone use a simplified or formalized English (with regular
grammar and no ambiguities) as a path to natural language understanding? Formal
language processing has nothing to do with natural language processing other
than sharing a common lexicon that make them appear superficially similar.
- Natural language can be learned from examples. Formal language can
not.
- Formal language has an exact grammar and semantics. Natural language
does not.
- Formal language must be parsed before it can be understood. Natural
language must be understood before it can be parsed.
- Formal language is designed to be processed efficiently on a fast,
reliable, sequential computer that neither makes nor tolerates errors, between
systems that have identical, fixed language models. Natural language evolved to
be processed efficiently by a slow, unreliable, massively parallel computer
with enormous memory in a noisy environment between systems that have different
but adaptive language models.
So how does yet another formal language processing system help us
understand natural language? This route has been a dead end for 50 years, in
spite of the ability to always make some initial progress before getting stuck.
-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--- On Wed, 10/22/08, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2008, 12:27 PM
This is the standard Lojban dictionary
http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/
I am not so worried about word meanings, they can always be handled
via reference to WordNet via usages like run_1, run_2, etc. ... or as you say
by using rarer, less ambiguous words
Prepositions are more worrisome, however, I suppose they can be
handled in a similar way, e.g. by defining an ontology of preposition meanings
like with_1, with_2, with_3, etc.
In fact we had someone spend a couple months integrating existing
resources into a preposition-meaning ontology like this a while back ... the
so-called PrepositionWordNet ... or as it eventually came to be called the
LARDict or LogicalArgumentRelationshipDictionary ...
I think it would be feasible to tweak RelEx to recognize these sorts
of subscripts, and in this way to recognize a highly controlled English that
would be unproblematic to map semantically...
We would then say e.g.
I ate dinner with_2 my fork
I live in_2 Maryland
I have lived_6 for_3 41 years
(where I suppress all _1's, so that e.g. ate means ate_1)
Because, RelEx already happily parses the syntax of all simple
sentences, so the only real hassle to deal with is disambiguation. We could
use similar hacking for reference resolution, temporal sequencing, etc.
The terrorists_v1 robbed_v2 my house. After that_v2, the jerks_v1
urinated in_3 my yard.
I think this would be a relatively pain-free way to communicate with
an AI that lacks the common sense to carry out disambiguation and reference
resolution reliably. Also, the log of communication would provide a nice
training DB for it to use in studying disambiguation.
-- Ben G
On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 12:00 PM, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>> IMHO that is an almost hopeless approach, ambiguity is too
integral to English or any natural language ... e.g preposition ambiguity
Actually, I've been making pretty good progress. You just always
use big words and never use small words and/or you use a specific phrase as a
"word". Ambiguous prepositions just disambiguate to one of
three/four/five/more possible unambiguous words/phrases.
The problem is that most previous subsets (Simplified English,
Basic English) actually *favored* the small tremendously over-used/ambiguous
words (because you got so much more "bang for the buck" with them).
Try only using big unambiguous words and see if you still have the
same opinion.
>> If you want to take this sort of approach, you'd better start
with Lojban instead.... Learning Lojban is a pain but far less pain than
you'll have trying to make a disambiguated subset of English.
My first reaction is . . . . Take a Lojban dictionary and see if
you can come up with an unambiguous English word or very short phrase for each
Lojban word. If you can do it, my approach will work and will have the
advantage that the output can be read by anyone (i.e. it's the equivalent of me
having done it in Lojban and then added a Lojban -> English translation on the
end) though the input is still *very* problematical (thus the need for a
semantically-driven English->subset translator). If you can't do it, then my
approach won't work.
Can you do it? Why or why not? If you can, do you still believe
that my approach won't work? Oh, wait . . . . a Lojban-to-English dictionary
*does* attempt to come up with an unambiguous English word or very short phrase
for each Lojban word. :-)
Actually, hmmmm . . . . a Lojban dictionary would probably help me
focus my efforts a bit better and highlight things that I may have missed . . .
. do you have a preferred dictionary or resource? (Google has too many for me
to do a decent perusal quickly)
----- Original Message -----
From: Ben Goertzel
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues
Personally, rather than starting with NLP, I think that we're
going to need to start with a formal language that is a disambiguated subset of
English
IMHO that is an almost hopeless approach, ambiguity is too
integral to English or any natural language ... e.g preposition ambiguity
If you want to take this sort of approach, you'd better start
with Lojban instead.... Learning Lojban is a pain but far less pain than
you'll have trying to make a disambiguated subset of English.
ben g
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--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
Director of Research, SIAI
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch
manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die
gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert Heinlein
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