From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun Sep 24 10:15:09 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sun, 24 Sep 2006 10:15:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1GRXYy-0001OX-L8 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sun, 24 Sep 2006 10:14:44 -0700 Received: from centrmmtao04.cox.net ([70.168.83.80]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1GRXYu-0001OP-TS for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sun, 24 Sep 2006 10:14:44 -0700 Received: from eastrmimpo02.cox.net ([68.1.16.120]) by centrmmtao04.cox.net (InterMail vM.6.01.06.01 201-2131-130-101-20060113) with ESMTP id <20060924171438.BHRA14774.centrmmtao04.cox.net@eastrmimpo02.cox.net> for ; Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:14:38 -0400 Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([72.192.234.183]) by eastrmimpo02.cox.net with bizsmtp id SHEF1V00Z3y5FKc0000000 Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:14:18 -0400 Message-ID: <4516BCFB.70904@lojban.org> Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:14:35 -0400 From: Bob LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: my opinion on why lojban isn't specifically well suited for human-computer interaction References: <4516a2fe.7679a989.04d0.2c5d@mx.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4516a2fe.7679a989.04d0.2c5d@mx.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 12616 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list M@ wrote: > First, a disclaimer; while I have put a significant amount of time into > thinking about this kind of thing I’m certainly not an expert. In this area, even the experts aren't experts. > The > difference between MI and AI is as fundamental as the difference between > 1 and 0. Thus, the two potential uses of a syntactically unambiguous > language (SUL for brevity) in a computer have no grey area between them. Guessing what you mean by MI and AI, I think it is the grey area that you don't see that is precisely the area of interest. > The short term use (dream) is to teach computers to utilize the > language’s unambiguous nature to provide an interface that can be read > and written to in a spoken language. That could be done with FORTRAN, but the issue is "what is a 'language'" > The problem I have with this goal is that it’s a solution to a problem > that has been solved for decades. There are many SULs that are already > written and in use as computer interfaces across the world. My personal > favorite is bash. To compare bash to lojban I would say that bash is > easier to learn (it is much smaller after all) and every bit as > versatile as a cross-programming-language interaction framework as > lojban could possibly be in a classical computing environment. That's fine, if the only thing you want to do with a computer is write programs. But computer languages are limited to ONLY writing computer programs. One has to at least get to the versatility of SQL in order to be useful to users, and even there the ideal is to have a somewhat more natural-language interface. > Both > languages are equally not my first, and I would say I’m truely fluent in > neither, but comfortable with both. One cannot be fluent in a computer language, unless perhaps one is a computer, since the language is too small to think in. You therefore have to translate your thoughts from English or whatever into the computer language, which takes time, and is subject to error, especially when you are trying to be as fluent as possible (i.e. fast). > Another way to say it, is no matter how hard you try classical computers > will never be able to figure anything, they rely on unambiguous meanings > to get things done, lojban doesn’t necessarily provide that, bash does. Which is where AI comes in, because AI doesn't require unambiguous meanings. It is significantly aided by unambiguous meanings when they are intended, known and can be conveyed, but an AI is ideally capable of asking a quasi-intelligent question to resolve an ambiguous meaning, to seek additional specificity for a vague meaning, or perhaps do a probabilistic or other analysis of user intent when these aren't possible. > The real beauty of lojban isn’t the fact that it’s a SUL. By being SUL, it cuts out one chunk of the processing load in interpreting user input. There is still speech processing, and semantic ambiguity, and syntactic/semantic errors as sources of processing load, but a complete solution to one problem should in theory make the total task of natural language processing easier. >As with any real beauty there is always a converse beast, which > in this case is the fact that it’s silly to be more creative than the > person (or computer) you’re talking to. They call this "art". > Of course, the other dream is to actually teach a MI how to speak and > understand lojban. Assuming such an auto-associative system could be > made hardware wise, there would be absolutely nothing preventing it from > being a perfectly natural feeling interface in spoken or typed lojban. > You could ask it absurd questions and it could give you obviously > considered answers. The problem I find with this is that once you’ve > built MI there’s no reason whatsoever you couldn’t teach it English as well. English is a much more difficult problem, because it is not an SUL, and has evolved as a non-SUL so that it has extremely odd semantic relations. If you ran your computer the way that run your dog or the way you run a lap on the track (as opposed to sitting on the lap of your girlfriend - I wouldn't want you to run her lap, or to have the runs on her lap - she wouldn't exactly lap it up). And those are the obvious kinds of problems. Much of the difficulty with English is that the problems are NOT obvious, and every structural analysis of English runs into some problems that violate any generalizations that have been otherwise made. I was just reading a short discussion of the possible determiners in a noun phrase in English, and the restrictions are as clear as mud. And then we have "pretty little girls school" ... lojbab To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.