From: nanowave (nanowave@shaw.ca)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2003 - 21:25:56 MST
strike 2
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
>[mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Party of Citizens
>Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2003 11:38 AM
>To: extropians@extropy.org
>Cc: life-gazette@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: Re: language abuse and machine translation
>
>
>On Sat, 8 Mar 2003, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, spike66 wrote:
>>
>> >In this forum I have decried the practice of
>> >nonstandard language use for the reason that
>> >soon now machines will be advanced enough to
>> >do realtime translations using speech recognition
>> >and a simple sort of table-lookup style
>> >substitution. The overuse of obscure allusions
>> >and verbing, among other language bad habits,
>> >will delay practical machine translation, as
>> >well as interfere with machines' ability to
>> >understand humans.
>> >
>> >[...]
>> >
>> >We need newspeak. Before it's too late.
>
>How about robospeak instead of newspeak (aka moronspeak when expressed
>according to Whitehouse dialect)? And yes, we need robospeak before it is
>too late and the Queen's English drifts into irreversible moronspeak.
>
>Sample moronspeak:
>
>"All chickens are for us or against us. Some chickens cross the road.
>There are good doer chickens and bad doer chickens. Therefore the chicken
>crossed the road."
>
>Now this argument has three premisses and a conclusion. Logicians will
>immediately recognize it as translatable into the symbolic language of
>predicate calculus. But try translating that into French (and back to
>English again) and you will understand why Powell is having problems at the
>UN these days.
>
>> I'm not going to dumb down my language for the programmers' inability to
>> understand it (I'm a programmer). Screw the stupid machines that we
>> have now, and invent new, richer, different forms of speech.
>
>You could use the YES/NO/AND/OR connectors of combinatorial logic which
>mean exactly the same in Adult Normative Standard English (ANSE), as the
>only connectors for linking descriptors. A descriptor would be any symbol,
>word, phrase, clause, sentence etc. which can be UNDERSTOOD by
>ANSE-speakers even if it is not conventionally used in ANSE as long as it
>can be assigned a T or F truth value. The criterion for the phrasing of
>decriptors is purely semantic, ie it must communicate (to that ANSE target
>population). Its lexicon consists of the descriptors as above. Its syntax
>is the syntax of combinatorial logic, to which all other forms of
>arithmetic, logic and mathematics can be reduced. Can it be developed to
>the stage at which it meets the semantic criterion of accounting for
>everything we MEAN to say when we use ANSE?
>
>POC
>
> Mix them,
>> like it's already happening between English and local languages, and use
>> them freely.
>>
>> Computers, for now, are merely a tool. A tool's job is to help his owner,
>> not to restrict his freedom. A program must meet some requirements before
>> granted the "human-level intelligence" medal. Excellent speech
>recognition
>> and understanding are a given. And I would expect it to be much better
>> than us at moving between languages and inventing new ones.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Alfio
>>
>>
>
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