Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On 2014-02-14 6:43 PM, Nicholas Evans wrote: So unless Lilly is hooked up to a machine that can then rephrase and recursively refer to Lilly's thoughts, these new restrictions should be sufficient. Otherwise, I see no reason that a dog-machine combination shouldn't be allowed to play, though I doubt they would do much. http://i.imgur.com/xyw8SiO.jpg
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On 2/12/2014 12:46 PM, omd wrote: On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 9:42 AM, Nich Del Evans nich...@gmail.com wrote: I also agree that they can imitate recursion to an even more limited extent. Well, if a computer program can manage to parse a deeply nested sentence, I expect it could proceed to manipulate it with far more ease than a human. e.g. if your equivalent in meaning sentence went 10 levels down. As for Google Translate, here are some alternate languages: Spanish: I am a green man is a meaning equivalent to I am the green time and a man. French: I'm a Green Man has the same meaning: I am green and a man. German: I am a green man has the same meaning I am green and a man. Italian: I am a green man is equivalent to the meaning of 'I am both green and a man. 1/4 basically correct, 2/4 grammatically incorrect but not nonsensical (and we shouldn't mean to exclude people with bad grammar :). You'd know more than I, but I guess Google Translate's use of statistical rather than rule-based translation deals better with the more ambiguous sentences found in most texts at the cost of making this use case look particularly bad. I think we got off mark here though. To at least a minor extent we can both agree computers can emulate recursion and rephrasing. But I don't think many agree that they can emulate original thought. In fact, if they had original thought we'd probably have no objection to them playing. This revision was a response to the argument that a dog can communicate original thoughts, which seems true enough. But while a dog has original thoughts, it has very limited rephrasing and no recursion. So unless Lilly is hooked up to a machine that can then rephrase and recursively refer to Lilly's thoughts, these new restrictions should be sufficient. Otherwise, I see no reason that a dog-machine combination shouldn't be allowed to play, though I doubt they would do much.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 6:43 PM, Nicholas Evans nich...@gmail.com wrote: Otherwise, I see no reason that a dog-machine combination shouldn't be allowed to play, though I doubt they would do much. We really need a quote book... :)
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On Wed, 12 Feb 2014, omd wrote: I'm somewhat skeptical of the word organism. If it has to be biological, then just say human, there's no guarantee hypothetical space aliens or AIs would be considered organisms anyway. :) [snip] /me wonders whether speculating about Tines is too silly for the New Agora. Or is that the Old Agora? Humans may not be very good at formulating classifications that are meant to separate themselves from unknown unknowns, without discriminating on the basis of biology. Trying too hard might either create a distinction too hard to check over email, or accidentally exclude biological humans that should intuitively be included. Greetings, Ørjan.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 12:37 AM, omd c.ome...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 1:00 AM, Nicholas Evans nich...@gmail.com wrote: [An attempt at very simply tightening the restraints against attempting to register things that cannot utilize language to communicate their own ideas. While originating and communicating imply intentionality, they're hard to disprove when given a sufficiently clever sentence generator. Rephrasing implies understanding of the semantics of a language, and recursion implies a cognitive awareness of a language. Combined, these are unlikely to be spoofed.] I'm somewhat skeptical of the word organism. If it has to be biological, then just say human, there's no guarantee hypothetical space aliens or AIs would be considered organisms anyway. :) If not, then you have to deal with the issue that personhood is currently an all or nothing passive affair, while the aforementioned hypothetical entities might not have such rigid boundaries. For example, while it is reasonable (though perhaps unkind) to require Deb and Bob to exist as separate players, because humans tend to be capable of operating with distinct personalities, Vernor Vinge's Tines might not appreciate the sentiment despite having some ability to be split up. This could be mostly solved by only requiring that players be disjoint, but that would require putting restrictions on registration rather than merely tweaking the definition of a person. (Though for an AI which could fork itself on a whim, the concept of disjoint might itself be murky.) Finally, I think that the new parts of the proposed wording are not actually that hard for an actual AI to satisfy. After all, automated rephrasing would be a similar problem to machine translation - not 100% accurate but able to produce readable outputs for most inputs. (Well, it can be accomplished in a roundabout way using the latter - do what translationparty.com does for a language easier to translate than Japanese and there's your rephrasing.) Recursively referring to is harder to pin down, but probably doable to some extent. /me wonders whether speculating about Tines is too silly for the New Agora. Or is that the Old Agora? I agree that AI can imitate rephrasing, to an extremely limited extent. I also agree that they can imitate recursion to an even more limited extent. In fact, if it can rephrase then you could give it the set expression: Phrase A is identical in meaning to Rephrasing of A. I highly doubt the AIs ability to reliably rephrase that. A human could do so, then recursively refer to both versions, and continue to go down this rabbit hole to the limit of their working memory, and even moreso if they took the time to write every version down. Additionally, http://translationparty.com/#11235473: I am a green man is equivalent in meaning to I am both green and a man. 'I'm green man' is ' I'm green and people ' is semantically the same. ' ''Is green man I green and others ', is the same in meaning. ' ' The green man I green and others ', is the same in meaning. If this isn't satisfactory evidence, I could add more constraints. AI and Linguistics is my area of focus.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On 2/12/2014 8:24 AM, Ørjan Johansen wrote: On Wed, 12 Feb 2014, omd wrote: I'm somewhat skeptical of the word organism. If it has to be biological, then just say human, there's no guarantee hypothetical space aliens or AIs would be considered organisms anyway. :) [snip] /me wonders whether speculating about Tines is too silly for the New Agora. Or is that the Old Agora? Humans may not be very good at formulating classifications that are meant to separate themselves from unknown unknowns, without discriminating on the basis of biology. Trying too hard might either create a distinction too hard to check over email, or accidentally exclude biological humans that should intuitively be included. Greetings, Ørjan. This is the point of the Turing Test, actually. A method of determining if something is sentient or not over a text interface. Though I suppose in the normal TT at least one person needs to know who is and isn't a machine.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 9:42 AM, Nich Del Evans nich...@gmail.com wrote: I also agree that they can imitate recursion to an even more limited extent. Well, if a computer program can manage to parse a deeply nested sentence, I expect it could proceed to manipulate it with far more ease than a human. e.g. if your equivalent in meaning sentence went 10 levels down. As for Google Translate, here are some alternate languages: Spanish: I am a green man is a meaning equivalent to I am the green time and a man. French: I'm a Green Man has the same meaning: I am green and a man. German: I am a green man has the same meaning I am green and a man. Italian: I am a green man is equivalent to the meaning of 'I am both green and a man. 1/4 basically correct, 2/4 grammatically incorrect but not nonsensical (and we shouldn't mean to exclude people with bad grammar :). You'd know more than I, but I guess Google Translate's use of statistical rather than rule-based translation deals better with the more ambiguous sentences found in most texts at the cost of making this use case look particularly bad.
DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 1:00 AM, Nicholas Evans nich...@gmail.com wrote: [An attempt at very simply tightening the restraints against attempting to register things that cannot utilize language to communicate their own ideas. While originating and communicating imply intentionality, they're hard to disprove when given a sufficiently clever sentence generator. Rephrasing implies understanding of the semantics of a language, and recursion implies a cognitive awareness of a language. Combined, these are unlikely to be spoofed.] I'm somewhat skeptical of the word organism. If it has to be biological, then just say human, there's no guarantee hypothetical space aliens or AIs would be considered organisms anyway. :) If not, then you have to deal with the issue that personhood is currently an all or nothing passive affair, while the aforementioned hypothetical entities might not have such rigid boundaries. For example, while it is reasonable (though perhaps unkind) to require Deb and Bob to exist as separate players, because humans tend to be capable of operating with distinct personalities, Vernor Vinge's Tines might not appreciate the sentiment despite having some ability to be split up. This could be mostly solved by only requiring that players be disjoint, but that would require putting restrictions on registration rather than merely tweaking the definition of a person. (Though for an AI which could fork itself on a whim, the concept of disjoint might itself be murky.) Finally, I think that the new parts of the proposed wording are not actually that hard for an actual AI to satisfy. After all, automated rephrasing would be a similar problem to machine translation - not 100% accurate but able to produce readable outputs for most inputs. (Well, it can be accomplished in a roundabout way using the latter - do what translationparty.com does for a language easier to translate than Japanese and there's your rephrasing.) Recursively referring to is harder to pin down, but probably doable to some extent. /me wonders whether speculating about Tines is too silly for the New Agora. Or is that the Old Agora?
DIS: Re: BUS: (Mis)Applying My Linguistics Skills
On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 1:37 AM, omd c.ome...@gmail.com wrote: translationparty.com By the way: ... Independent non-recursive thoughts and ideas of people, all living organisms can usually see out outbound communication with. ... Usually, you can see biological ideas of outbound communications and independence of all non-recursive thought. Usually you can see the biological idea of sending communications and independence of all recursive thought. ... Recursive biological ideas can see many independent transmission.
