From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:58:51 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI Received: (qmail 11629 invoked from network); 13 Dec 1996 01:57:41 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se (192.36.125.6) by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with SMTP; 13 Dec 1996 01:57:41 -0000 Received: from listmail.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <14.DDC224FF@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 2:57:40 +0100 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 19:46:25 -0600 Reply-To: Seth Golub Sender: Lojban list From: Seth Golub Subject: Re: Lojban's imperfections? X-To: cprchrd@mailserv.mta.ca X-cc: Lojban List To: Veijo Vilva In-Reply-To: <199612122242.QAA08636@cs.wustl.edu> Content-Length: 885 Lines: 30 Message-ID: <7lgqgsnQXYC.A.W-B.r60kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Christian Richard writes: > Are there again reasons why this order is not culturally neutral and > wasn't originally determined randomly instead of matching the > natural order the arguments would have in English? This reminds me of a wonderful story from the Jargon File. http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/s/SomeAIKoans.html In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe" Sussman replied. "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said. Minsky then shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So that the room will be empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.