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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. I’m still going for my BS. Computers are both digital and binary (note: I distinguish
digital from binary, some people disagree, but that’s another argument
altogether (and yes I’m aware that binary implies digital, that phrase is
foreshadowing)), which makes them an interesting self metaphor. 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. 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. Obviously in a classical (ie
linear processor based) computer syntax ambiguity is a severe no-no because the
correct (intended) parsing is a non-digital process. Initially it’s
very tempting to say, oh, here’s a language that sidesteps that problem
by eliminating syntax ambiguity, we should use it to provide a more natural
interface! And yes, that goal can be reached in a year or two with
devoted work. 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. Both
languages are equally not my first, and I would say I’m truely fluent in
neither, but comfortable with both. Of course, it is possible that in the
near future there will be core (to borrow a term from the ASL community)
jbopre, but even they will find the system is as unintuitive as any other
digital language processing system (even with AI assistance) because of the
restrictions requiring digital formatting. 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. The real beauty of lojban isn’t the fact that
it’s a SUL. The real beauty of it is a consequence of being a SUL,
and that is, it can be used to convey things in absurdly creative (ie anything
but digital) ways. 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. Anyone who has
dealt with the people that work at a DMV knows exactly what I’m talking
about. Lets look at a very simple example that directly relates to
an everyday computer activity in a lojban based classical computer system. ko minde mi> la zgikeB.mp3 fukpi la zgikeA.mp3 je’e The computer had no problem using with the command because
it was in the finite list of things it is programmed to do, but if I throw even
the simplest creative twist into the command it breaks out of the list of
functions and the computer has difficulty. ko minde mi> la zgikeC.mp3 fukpi la cdrom0 le mp3 la
ripperprogram .a’onai je’enai ko minde mi> ko facki go’i .a’onai je’enai ko minde mi> .o’onaisai This example was designed to illustrate two specific
problems with a linguistically interfaced classical computers. Yes, the
first command could have been simplified to “la zgikeC.mp3 ripperprogram
la cdrom0 le mp3” and it probably would have worked, but what if there
was some desired functionality that fukpi provided (a cvs push or something)?
That aspect of the operation would then have to be done in a separate command.
To interpret the command correctly the fukpi programming would have to figure
out how to use whatever x4 argument you could send it, but the nature of the
language makes that impossible without understanding the meaning of the words
in the x4 place, simple recursion won’t do it. The second thing I’m pointing out here is that 90% of
the people I sit at a modern command prompt don’t understand the
limitations of the system, so they intuitively assume that it speaks whatever
language the OS prompts are in. Then they try to talk to the computer
through the keyboard and are frustrated when it doesn’t work. It’s
freaking hilarious sometimes (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=77851792&blogID=130868121&Mytoken=26C6508D-0CAC-43BB-BDA1B437DCB0AA7811819937
is a candid transcript of one such occasion), but it’s remarkably
non-productive. 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. The problem with human languages is that they are based on
understanding. The problem with computer languages is that they’re
based on digital principles (which don’t really apply in an analog world). That’s what I think anyway, if you disagree I’d
love to hear why. --M@ |