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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
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roughly two thirds of this thread should be moved to the "A bunch of baloney" thread. furthermoreover, and in the second place, it seems somehow appropriate that it's made the screen go wiiiiide.
- joe (PIDOMA) friday
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Joined: Oct 2001
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roughly two thirds of this thread should be moved to the "A bunch of baloney" thread."2/3rds"? !!! You are being far too charitable, tsuwm. What about the baloney Wordminstel wrote? No fair. You're just trying to spare his feelings. 
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
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Jeez, don't you realise just how transparent your sock puppets are, Word-what-ever-the-hell-you call-yourselves-now? Every time I see one of your posts I'm irresistably reminded of the "The Three Faces of Eve". Except she was interesting.
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re Word-what-ever-the-hellI won't let your provocation induce me to stay, Capfka. However, it is a temptation.
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veteran
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Regarding the "Chinese room":
Given the other allusions in his message, I suspect he was refering to the Chinese Room experiment of John Searl. John Searl is a philosopher who believes not only that computers can't think now, but that they won't ever think in the future. And his chinese room gedankenexperiment is intended to demonstrate this.
(Of course, I disagree with John Searl, but that's irrelevant.)
k
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: May 2004
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Hey Plutarch, do you ever talk to ole Wordminstrel. He might not be the smartest turtle in the tank but he would at least stick to the subject. I found this refreshing. Maybe he simply avoided making rude remarks only in deference to the instigator of the thread, but no matter, I thought his predilection of focusing on the point to be very considerate and polite. Anyway if you happen to see him tell him that his last salient post, the one that cited the example of Koko; the talking gorilla, was not well thought out. Koko; the gorilla who once signed her masters that she wanted to move from California to Hawaii, and so they did. Koko, whose signing skills are highly suspect. Koko, who allows herself to be the fund-raising instrument of many thousands of dollars while her brothers and sisters in the African grasslands are becoming extinct. Not to mention "Rico" the border collie. While Rico's feats are mind-boggling, at their core they are merely an astonishing display of the innate skills of certain doglike creatures especially when shown in a showboat setting. Here in Alabama our tracking hounds can track a single low-life escapee from our modern prison system while at the same time simultaneously studiously ignoring the tens of thousands of decent folks who go to church. Now that's impressive. Please tell Wordminstrel, Plutarch, that his dog and gorilla example sucked.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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re Plutarch's mannersYou mustn't take Plutarch too seriously, Amemeba. I don't. He does like to sport with his fellow sock puppets, me and Grapho, but that's just what AnnaS would describe as "male bonding". In any case, Plutarch is never disrespectful to anyone who is not a sock puppet, unless they are disrespectful to him first. That is something Capfka might wish to take into consideration in the future. As an aside to Capfka, Plutarch seldom gives anyone more than one warning. re KokoIt seems it is more than just Koko who has learned ASL, Amemeba, as you can see: Extract: Dr. Chalcraft's presentation, "Sign Modulations of Cross-Fostered Chimpanzees and Gorillas," demonstrated that both chimpanzees and gorillas (Koko) who have been taught American Sign Language (ASL) modulate their sign to change the meaning or emphasis in a manner similar to human signers: The part of the study involving chimpanzees was performed by Dr. Chalcraft as part of her Ph.D. dissertation before coming to the Gorilla Foundation. For more, pls go to: http://www.koko.org/world/journal.phtmlre RicoYour characterization of Rico's skills as simply "dog-like" misses the entire point of the particular skill which has generated so much excitement and interest in the scientific community, Amemeba, namely, the cognitive skill known as "fast mapping". I don't claim to be an expert on this subject, but those who are experts seem to be divided into 2 camps: Those who are convinced that Rico exhibits cognitive skills equalivent to a human toddler; and Those who remain unconvinced and would like to see further studies. None of the experts quoted in the many newspaper reports I have read are as dismissive of the evidence supporting Rico's "fast mapping" abilities as you seem to be, Amemeba. I'm sure Dr. Bloom, the psychology professor at Yale University who wrote a commentary on the Rico study for Science magazine would be interested in knowing what science you are relying on in concluding that his evidence for Rico's human toddler-like abilities "sucks". Extract from USA Today report of June 10th: "The researchers think Rico figures out the words by using a strategy called "fast mapping" that lets him quickly figure out that a new word goes with a new object. "We know children can do this -- if they hear a word just once, in the course of a conversation, they can remember what it means weeks, even months, later," said Paul Bloom, a psychology professor at Yale University who wrote a commentary for Science about the study. Children typically pick up the technique at age 2, he said." You have always been respectful of me, Amemeba, so I thought I would return the courtesy by returning, on this one occasion, to make this reply.While I will not be returning any time soon, Amemeba, I can't speak for Plutarch. He was more than a little put off by Capfka and he might return to give Capfka a chance to show what stuff he is really made of - in a battle of wits befitting gentlemen, I hasten to add, not with the crudeness which marked Capfka's earlier outburst.
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Koko and Rico. Vaguely familiar with koko. Never heard of Rico. In general, I'm highly skeptical of these kinds of things - and yet. When I was young, our family had a lot of dogs. By the time I was a teenager I was training them. When I was 15 we moved back to the lower 48 from AK. Drove through Canada and stayed with grandparents in OH for a few weeks. I got bored and decided to try my hand at training my mom's poodle. In a day and a half to three days I trained her to do an entire obstacle course I had layed out in the bedroom. Part of the course consisted of her going around the leg of a chair exactly three times. I was aware that the dog might be drawing subtle cues from me - unfortunately I didn't know how to do a controlled experiment at that time. But I did make every effort not to betray my feeling to the animal.
I've done part of the training on LOTS of dogs and complete training on one or two, but this was really remarkable - not that I was able to do it, but that I was able to do it so quickly. And the going around the leg three times part - well, if a complete amateur like myself could teach a dog this in three days, I reckon it's not inconceivable to me that an animal much closer to human might learn a great deal more. I'm skeptical, but not closed-minded.
k
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Joined: Mar 2000
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
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What is the inverse of "mean"? Using the passive is not enough. "Apple means X." ==> "X is meant by apple." If a relational term like "meaning" actually had a unique "inverse", things would be much simpler - and rather boring. Every transmission of information is lossy by necessity, i.e. partly irreversible, and thanks to this fact, new things may still be said and heard  ..
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veteran
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Every transmission of information is lossy by necessity, i.e. partly irreversible, and thanks to this fact, new things may still be said and heard
Putting together what jheem has said, and you have just said, in connection with "Turing's dilemma", it helps me to understand what Amemeba may have been getting at in describing her "Cro-magnon" theory of words [again intending no disrespect to Amemeba in abbreviating her theory in this way, in fact, exactly the opposite].
Poets use words as word pictures to communicate ideas and feelings which are not otherwise accessible using words anchored to their strict, technical meanings. In this way, I would agree with you that words can be "lossy" and, in this "lossiness", stretch the boundaries of perception, and, consequently, the boundaries of what is possible, the comprehension of what might be.
Einstein explained that he achieved his greatest insights in visual terms, including his theory of relativity which came to him in the image of a person falling off a roof with the ground rushing up to meet him.
Perhaps we should be paying more attention to the contribution which poets, throughout history [reaching all the way back to Amemeba's "Cro-magnon" wordsmiths], have made to the advancement of science, wseiber. After all, it was William Blake who said "to see the world in a grain of sand".
It is also William Blake whose navigations of the "terra incognita" are seen by some as having prepared the ground for Sigmund Freud and later Carl Jung.
Thank you, all of you, not least Amemeba, for bringing me to this compelling insight.
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