Any female here?

[Heinz Doofenshmirtz]

Advantage of being single? My SO accepts my rants about silly steels, I accept her rants about silly linguistic frameworks. I really don't see any advantage in not having a person around who is capable of both nodding friendly to an OCD rant and pointing out that perhaps not the entire rest of the world sees this monumental problem the same way as you do. (Also, while I have learned enough about her field to confuse people around me, she owns several SAKs and won't use inferior products. Some games aren't zero sum, everybody wins.)

 

 

She's either a psychologist, a linguist, or in a very closely related field I'd guess...   

And, this is one of the things I love about this place... where else can you talk about cool toys er, uh, tools... and also have game theory come into the discussion?!

Prisoner's dilemma anyone?

[AimlessWanderer]

Advantage of being single? My SO accepts my rants about silly steels, I accept her rants about silly linguistic frameworks. I really don't see any advantage in not having a person around who is capable of both nodding friendly to an OCD rant and pointing out that perhaps not the entire rest of the world sees this monumental problem the same way as you do. (Also, while I have learned enough about her field to confuse people around me, she owns several SAKs and won't use inferior products. Some games aren't zero sum, everybody wins.)

 

 

She's either a psychologist, a linguist, or in a very closely related field I'd guess...   

And, this is one of the things I love about this place... where else can you talk about cool toys er, uh, tools... and also have game theory come into the discussion?!

Prisoner's dilemma anyone?

My first thoughts were NLP Practitioner, Ericksonian Hypnotherapist or Advertising, but like any topic on here ...

 

 

[Chako]

 

[Steinar]

She's either a psychologist, a linguist, or in a very closely related field I'd guess...   

That's a correct assumption. Her degree is in computer linguistics.

Prisoner's dilemma anyone?

As regarding to multi-tools or relationships? Sounds like a pretty kinky relationship...

[Steinar]

My first thoughts were NLP Practitioner, Ericksonian Hypnotherapist or Advertising,

Scary combo of fields when you think about it...

but like any topic on here ...

 

 

 

[N_N_R]

Joining the female club  I don't have any SAKs, though.

[nuphoria]

Lesbians are extremely sexy to me. Date? Sure, we can take a look at our tools. SAKs of course, see it is not OT.

I was mostly avoiding your comments, but now I've had enough.

Here's the deal - lesbians are not, and will never be interested in you. Sod off and download some crappy porn like every other pervert online. This is a forum for multitool enthusiasts; not little boys who apparently know less than nothing about women and like to post offensive comments to illustrate that. I'm finding you offensive anyway.

Grow up or play somewhere else please.

[enki_ck]

Joining the female club  I don't have any SAKs, though.

That will change soon, trust me.

[GigaHz]

Lesbians are extremely sexy to me. Date? Sure, we can take a look at our tools. SAKs of course, see it is not OT.

I was mostly avoiding your comments, but now I've had enough.

Here's the deal - lesbians are not, and will never be interested in you. Sod off and download some crappy porn like every other pervert online. This is a forum for multitool enthusiasts; not little boys who apparently know less than nothing about women and like to post offensive comments to illustrate that. I'm finding you offensive anyway.

Grow up or play somewhere else please.

 

[N_N_R]

Joining the female club  I don't have any SAKs, though.

That will change soon, trust me.

Lol, are you gonna make me   Kidding, I hope so

[AimlessWanderer]

Lesbians are extremely sexy to me. Date? Sure, we can take a look at our tools. SAKs of course, see it is not OT.

I was mostly avoiding your comments, but now I've had enough.

Here's the deal - lesbians are not, and will never be interested in you. Sod off and download some crappy porn like every other pervert online. This is a forum for multitool enthusiasts; not little boys who apparently know less than nothing about women and like to post offensive comments to illustrate that. I'm finding you offensive anyway.

Grow up or play somewhere else please.

 

I echo the sentiments above. I am a red blooded straight male and I was getting a little uncomfortable with those comments too, as they were disrespectful and targeted towards people I consider friends (both here and in my "real" life)

[Syph007]

Lesbians are extremely sexy to me. Date? Sure, we can take a look at our tools. SAKs of course, see it is not OT.

I was mostly avoiding your comments, but now I've had enough.

Here's the deal - lesbians are not, and will never be interested in you. Sod off and download some crappy porn like every other pervert online. This is a forum for multitool enthusiasts; not little boys who apparently know less than nothing about women and like to post offensive comments to illustrate that. I'm finding you offensive anyway.

Grow up or play somewhere else please.

 

I echo the sentiments above. I am a red blooded straight male and I was getting a little uncomfortable with those comments too, as they were disrespectful and targeted towards people I consider friends (both here and in my "real" life)

I concur.  Your comments are completely inappropriate. 

[Heinz Doofenshmirtz]

She's either a psychologist, a linguist, or in a very closely related field I'd guess...   

That's a correct assumption. Her degree is in computer linguistics.

Prisoner's dilemma anyone?

As regarding to multi-tools or relationships? Sounds like a pretty kinky relationship...

Computer linguistics?  Interesting!  You're gonna have to clarify though... programming languages?  Simulation and modeling of real languages?  AI?  Communications and networking protocols?

Prisoner's Dliemma; no kink... just decision making / game-theory.

[J Mackrel Jones]

Prisoner's Dilemma -- or Darwinian Altruism?

"Why can't we just be friends?"

[user24]

When I studied a bit of computational linguistics it was related to parsing natural language, modeling semantics, grammar, etc, more than for example the compilers guys who were all about grammars of programming languages. It's a very interesting field. Although it seemed that the information retrieval people had made more progress than the people trying to parse language semantically. Really fascinating though.

[J Mackrel Jones]

Say what ?

[Steinar]

Computer linguistics?  Interesting!  You're gonna have to clarify though... programming languages?  Simulation and modeling of real languages?  AI?  Communications and networking protocols?

Prisoner's Dliemma; no kink... just decision making / game-theory.

I think the correct term in English is computational linguistics when I think about it an extra second. She did her master's level thesis on machine translation of compound words, using web search engines, actually. (Too bad the APIs now are so limited that it's not possible to do that kind of research from outside of the web search companies anymore.) So in other words, working on natural languages using machines. These days she doesn't get to use her education too much in her work, but linguistics still her passion and hobby. (And steel is neither my education nor my work, I just know a very friendly knife maker and metallurgist (PhD in tool steels) who has taught me enough to form prejudices. )

I am of course familiar with Prisoner's Dilemma, just a bad attempt at humour. I like a way of summing up morality by way of that dilemma I once read: The goal of a system of morality is to make strangers choose the risky/trusting option in the Prisoner's Dilemma. In other words, make people assume a certain level of trustworthiness from strangers, thus creating a better society.

[Steinar]

When I studied a bit of computational linguistics it was related to parsing natural language, modeling semantics, grammar, etc, more than for example the compilers guys who were all about grammars of programming languages. It's a very interesting field. Although it seemed that the information retrieval people had made more progress than the people trying to parse language semantically. Really fascinating though.

That observation is in my opinion one of the best examples of Dijkstra's truism about computers and thinking:

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”

We can do way more with computers by letting them do what they are good at, than trying to make them imitate us, humans, where we excel. Of course, this is slowly changing as transistor count skyrockets and we can use more and more algorithms reminiscent of how biological systems operate. Still, a good human chess player operates by pattern recognition, and is now routinely beaten by computers that map all possible outcomes sufficiently many steps ahead. The human uses its strengths, the computer is programmed to leverage what the computer is good at.

[J Mackrel Jones]

How did we get to here from asking whether ladies like knives?
How did we get to the moon from standing up on two feet?
Rock on, compadres/commadres !

[Heinz Doofenshmirtz]

When I studied a bit of computational linguistics it was related to parsing natural language, modeling semantics, grammar, etc, more than for example the compilers guys who were all about grammars of programming languages. It's a very interesting field. Although it seemed that the information retrieval people had made more progress than the people trying to parse language semantically. Really fascinating though.

That observation is in my opinion one of the best examples of Dijkstra's truism about computers and thinking:

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”

We can do way more with computers by letting them do what they are good at, than trying to make them imitate us, humans, where we excel. Of course, this is slowly changing as transistor count skyrockets and we can use more and more algorithms reminiscent of how biological systems operate. Still, a good human chess player operates by pattern recognition, and is now routinely beaten by computers that map all possible outcomes sufficiently many steps ahead. The human uses its strengths, the computer is programmed to leverage what the computer is good at.

I agree pretty much completely with your sentiment here. 

However, I object to the ways that computer chess programs are pitted against humans, particularly notable ones, like Kasparov.  I personally think the IBM Deep Blue team cheated, because they programmed all of his known recorded games into their system, and then refused to let him play a full tournament set of games against it.  They also refused to let him see the system in action before the match. 

Of course we know that it was more or less a standoff (if you look at the actual record of win/loss/draw, and not the spin the CS/AI people put on it), but I also think the reason the IBM people wouldn't let him play a full 21 game tournament against it is they were afraid he'd figure out it's tendencies, adapt, and end up beating it.  I also think the fault is partly Kasparov's because he was arrogant enough to assume their system couldn't beat him, and to agree to their one-sided terms.

This goes exactly with what you're saying about computers and people doing what they do best though.  Computers by definition can only work on "well defined" problems, as Newell & Simon characterized them.  People don't have those same limitations.  We can make our own definitions and rules, unlike computers.  The only thing that's even come close are the parallel distributed processing neural network systems that have been built, which themselves are far more capable than any traditional AI system ever has been, because they're modeled on how the nervous system works of course.  But, even they have significant differences and limitations compared to real "wetware".

I was fortunate enough to be a philosophy minor as an undergrad at Cal Berkeley, as took Philosophy of Mind from John Searle.  In my field though (cognitive and physiological psychology), the general outlook is decidedly materialist and reductionistic.  I don't subscribe to the thinking = brain action theory most of my colleagues do.  I subscribe to emergent property theory, that there's something greater that emerges from the complexity of brain function that goes beyond the simple sum of its actions as described by neurophysiology.  I believe conscious is a real causal force in the brain and that it's not just a non-causal and epiphenomenal by product of brain function the way the vast majority of my colleagues do.

Ack!  I've got lecture in 10 min.  Gotta go.  I'd love to ramble on about this more, but duty calls!  Young minds to indoctrinate!  Er, I mean, teach!  Yeah, that's it! 

[user24]

We can do way more with computers by letting them do what they are good at, than trying to make them imitate us, humans, where we excel.

Yes, I think that's very true. The bag of words / vector space approach is not particularly well grounded theoretically, and certainly isn't modeled on how humans do the job, but it plays to the strengths of the computer. It does have limits though. Even with SVMs and all the whizzy ML toys in the world, it's still very difficult to get a computer to understand the *sense* of a document. I still can't ask google *very* specific questions. But then it's optimised for keyword based document retrieval, not natural language querying. Maybe there are better systems out there.

they're modeled on how the nervous system works of course.  But, even they have significant differences and limitations compared to real "wetware".

yeah, I mean ANNs are 'inspired' by real neurons, but like you say, the actual similarity is really only superficial (compare genetic algorithms, which seem to more closely model nature's way of doing things).

You studied under Searle? Impressive! (Also, another Philosopher-cum-computer-scientist? Cool!).

there's something greater that emerges from the complexity of brain function that goes beyond the simple sum of its actions as described by neurophysiology.

Speaking of Searle, this aligns closely with an argument I made against his Chinese Box thought experiment (in an undergrad philosophy essay), namely that while none of the individual components of the box 'understands', the system as a whole - the sum of the components - could be said to.

[Steinar]

I agree pretty much completely with your sentiment here. 

However, I object to the ways that computer chess programs are pitted against humans, particularly notable ones, like Kasparov.  I personally think the IBM Deep Blue team cheated, because they programmed all of his known recorded games into their system, and then refused to let him play a full tournament set of games against it.  They also refused to let him see the system in action before the match. 

Of course we know that it was more or less a standoff (if you look at the actual record of win/loss/draw, and not the spin the CS/AI people put on it), but I also think the reason the IBM people wouldn't let him play a full 21 game tournament against it is they were afraid he'd figure out it's tendencies, adapt, and end up beating it.  I also think the fault is partly Kasparov's because he was arrogant enough to assume their system couldn't beat him, and to agree to their one-sided terms.

Interesting, I didn't know these details of that match. I did know the terms were one-sided, but I didn't know how they were so. (Except part of the strategy was tiring out the human.)

I was fortunate enough to be a philosophy minor as an undergrad at Cal Berkeley, as took Philosophy of Mind from John Searle.  In my field though (cognitive and physiological psychology), the general outlook is decidedly materialist and reductionistic.  I don't subscribe to the thinking = brain action theory most of my colleagues do.  I subscribe to emergent property theory, that there's something greater that emerges from the complexity of brain function that goes beyond the simple sum of its actions as described by neurophysiology.  I believe conscious is a real causal force in the brain and that it's not just a non-causal and epiphenomenal by product of brain function the way the vast majority of my colleagues do.

I find this very interesting. My background is from biophysics (though I have never worked professionally in the field), so I guess it is no surprise that I'm decidedly in the materialist camp. I liked this way PZ Myers put it: “I think consciousness is a product of self-referential modeling of how decisions are made in the brain in the absence of any specific information about the mechanisms of decision-making — it’s an illusion generated by a high-level ‘theory of mind’ module that generates highly simplified, highly derived models of how brains work that also happens to be applied to our own brain.”

Warning: From here on, just uninformed, personal opinion that will probably give a pro like yourself a headache.

Emergent properties is a fascinating thought, though. Personally, I think it's just an illusion from the way our minds work. We are so good at pattern recognition, that when a system reaches a level of complexity where we no longer can follow the workings of the system, we happily jump to the next, higher level of abstraction. Then, if we find order, systems, “beauty”, it's an emergent property, if we don't recognize anything, the system is chaotic.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on consciousness as an emergent property, especially what feedback mechanisms you envision giving it causal properties. I have actually never heard about it the way you put it as more than loose ideas. (Biophysicists in general don't care much about consciousness, that's for the weird psychophysicists next door. A field where I always have found the name giving weird associations. (The psychophysicists at my university worked with colour and vision, btw.))

Ack!  I've got lecture in 10 min.  Gotta go.  I'd love to ramble on about this more, but duty calls!  Young minds to indoctrinate!  Er, I mean, teach!  Yeah, that's it! 

Ah, but the borders between those two are more fleeting than most of us like to admit, arent' they?

(Hm... I wonder if I should edit the subject... )

[Steinar]

[...] The bag of words / vector space approach is not particularly well grounded theoretically, and certainly isn't modeled on how humans do the job, but it plays to the strengths of the computer. It does have limits though. Even with SVMs and all the whizzy ML toys in the world, it's still very difficult to get a computer to understand the *sense* of a document. I still can't ask google *very* specific questions. But then it's optimised for keyword based document retrieval, not natural language querying. Maybe there are better systems out there.

For webseach, not really. You would have to analyse a large corpus, and design a recall and ranking algorithm, based on the first step of the analysis. The part where the commercial players (Google, Bing) really shine compared to what is known in academia isn't really in information retrieval, it is in scaling, efficient implementations. Also, a typical user query is just a couple of words, far too little for any really deep linguistics analysis, so the systems just start using heuristics like your search history, your geographical location, your presumed first language and so on. Which is the reason it is so hard to search for the unusual meaning of a word... There are few real business secrets in search, but the exact details of ranking algorithms are probably one of them.

(I work with search software, so this, as opposed to most of the stuff I post, is actually an informed opinion. )

[Gareth]

Just so as folks know I am keeping an eye on this thread.  Please, can we have no more posts that might make any of our valued members feel uncomfortable.

[Lynn LeFey]

The Linguist/computer theory discussion, while excellent, might also be better spun off into another thread as well.

[Gareth]

The Linguist/computer theory discussion, while excellent, might also be better spun off into another thread as well.

Na, we don't mind a thread veering waaaay off topic if that's the direction the discussion takes.   Do feel free to try and drag it back on topic if you like though.

[Ashley]

This forum is known for thread derailing. I love it also!

Sent from Ash forum mobile

[Lynn LeFey]

Na, we don't mind a thread veering waaaay off topic if that's the direction the discussion takes.   Do feel free to try and drag it back on topic if you like though.

You ever hear the expression 'herding cats'? I think it might apply here.

[Gareth]

Na, we don't mind a thread veering waaaay off topic if that's the direction the discussion takes.   Do feel free to try and drag it back on topic if you like though.

You ever hear the expression 'herding cats'? I think it might apply here.

I love that expression.   Seems to apply to quite a few aspects of my life though.

[Heinz Doofenshmirtz]

You studied under Searle? Impressive! (Also, another Philosopher-cum-computer-scientist? Cool!).

Speaking of Searle, this aligns closely with an argument I made against his Chinese Box thought experiment (in an undergrad philosophy essay), namely that while none of the individual components of the box 'understands', the system as a whole - the sum of the components - could be said to.

I hold a doctorate in cognitive and physiological psychology.  I received my BA in psychology at Berkeley with a minor in philosophy.  I currently teach things like cognitive psych, physiological psych, sensory perception, etc.  For my dissertation, I did a comparative test of two major theories of visual attention in terms of their ability to predict human performance in a novel visual search task.  I also used that task to provide evidence for the idea that brain mechanisms of ocular and saccadic control are directly related to covert shifts of visual attention.

I'm familiar with the "systems" objection to the Chinese Room.  Searle's reply is quite simple and straightforward.  If the system "understands" Chinese, then anything can be a system and can be considered to "understand" whatever command we give it, or action we perform on it. 

So, my pen is also a "system"; I put it on the table with the intent that it stay there and not do anything until I pick it up to write with it, and it does so.  Therefore, according to the systems explanation, my pen understand the command "stay there until I pick you up". 

When I do pick up my pen and write with it, my pen dispenses ink where I want it to and so it can be said that my pen "understands" the command "dispense ink where I put you in contact with a surface".  Both of these examples are clearly hog-wash; in neither case is it valid to say that my pen "understands" either command, at least not in the way a person would understand them.  According to Searle, that is no different than what the Chinese Room is doing "as a system".  As a result, the "system" doesn't do any understanding at all.