From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue Jun 20 21:35:21 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:35:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FsuQh-0003Nk-91 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:35:03 -0700 Received: from mx27.mail.ru ([194.67.23.63]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FsuQZ-0003NS-TQ for lojban-list@lojban.org; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:35:03 -0700 Received: from [194.126.169.55] (port=7919 helo=1C-YANIS) by mx27.mail.ru with esmtp id 1FsuQZ-000PGc-00 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:34:55 +0400 Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 11:32:35 +0700 From: Yanis Batura X-Mailer: The Bat! (v3.5.30) Professional X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <1944521421.20060621113235@mail.ru> To: Chris Capel Subject: [lojban] Re: ambiguity in lojban In-Reply-To: <737b61f30606202005v6737ce2cw7f779ba5e102c579@mail.gmail.com> References: <737b61f30606202005v6737ce2cw7f779ba5e102c579@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -2.3 (--) X-archive-position: 11813 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: ybatura@mail.ru Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list

21.06.2006, 10:05 Chris Capel wrote:

> Many of the older texts mention that Lojban might be uniquely suitable

> for human-computer communication. The idea is that since computers are

> so bad at resolving the meaning of polysemous words, and at resolving

> ambiguity in grammar, (two things that humans are extremely good at,)

> that the absence of these things will make it much easier to allow

> computers to understand human speech. But the fact is that computers

> that don't have a flexible enough language model to resolve

> ambiguities from polysemy and grammar ambiguity are unlikely to be

> nearly subtle enough to correctly resolve ambiguities in extent. So

> creating a language like Lojban for that purpose (which was never the,

> or even a, primary purpose for the language, as I understand) is

> analogous to taking a course in mechanical engineering and building a

> shovel cleaner before starting the work on digging a tunnel to China.

> Any application in which some restricted subset of English could be

> used, except for problems with polysemy and grammar ambiguity, is an

> application that probably doesn't need to use a natural language at

> all.

The passage with the shovel to China is great! ;)

I think no one has ever pretended that Lojban can 10 times ease the understanding of the language by a machine.

Lojban just allows to throw away lots of debris present in any natural language (and constituting just 1% of the difficulties, IMHO) and concentrate on the main and biggest problem, namely the chain:

symbolic system -- [a lot of hidden, mysterious AI stuff, including context resolving] -- internal knowledge representation in a mind.

mi'e .ianis.

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