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When you think about it, the weird thing isn't so much that all human
languages are inherantly vague and ambiguous. The weird thing is that
this is almost never a problem. In the overwhelming majority of cases,
everybody still knows *exactly* what you mean, even though strictly
speaking most sentences could have several possible meanings.
Even more weirdly, people have invented more precise ways of saying
things (e.g., technical terms with exact and unambiguous meanings), and
yet humans find it *harder* to communicate this way, not easier. You
would have thought being able to say what you mean precisely would be
easier, but it clearly isn't. Again, you would have thought
understanding a sentence with only a single possible meaning would be
way easier. But it isn't.
This leaves me wondering... how the **** does the human mind actually
work anyway?!
If you try to program a computer, precise language is much easier to
handle than ambiguous stuff. Which makes complete sense. But humans,
apparently, function the opposite way round. Go figure!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> When you think about it, the weird thing isn't so much that all human
> languages are inherantly vague and ambiguous. The weird thing is that
> this is almost never a problem. In the overwhelming majority of cases,
> everybody still knows *exactly* what you mean, even though strictly
> speaking most sentences could have several possible meanings.
Communication isn't all verbal.
> This leaves me wondering... how the **** does the human mind actually
> work anyway?!
You're not the first...
> If you try to program a computer, precise language is much easier to
> handle than ambiguous stuff. Which makes complete sense. But humans,
> apparently, function the opposite way round. Go figure!
That doesn't compute. I don't have a program called "figure" in my
brain, so I don't know how to run it.
--
Boy making shadow pictures with his hand: "Look, Daddy, Digital Imaging."
/\ /\ /\ /
/ \/ \ u e e n / \/ a w a z
>>>>>>mue### [at] nawaz org<<<<<<
anl
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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> When you think about it, the weird thing isn't so much that all human
>> languages are inherantly vague and ambiguous. The weird thing is that
>> this is almost never a problem. In the overwhelming majority of cases,
>> everybody still knows *exactly* what you mean, even though strictly
>> speaking most sentences could have several possible meanings.
>
> Communication isn't all verbal.
Indeed. Especially when it's written in a book.
(*I* may have managed to read three volumes of Douglas Adams without
realising it was ment to be funny, but most people don't seem to make
that mistake.)
>> This leaves me wondering... how the **** does the human mind actually
>> work anyway?!
>
> You're not the first...
Heh. I'm sure I'm also not the first to suspect that "if brains were
simple enough to understand, we would be too simple to understand them".
> Boy making shadow pictures with his hand: "Look, Daddy, Digital Imaging."
Add the area_light keyword for analogue imagine.
Oh, wait...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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And lo On Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:56:14 -0000, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>
did spake thusly:
> Mueen Nawaz wrote:
>> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> When you think about it, the weird thing isn't so much that all human
>>> languages are inherantly vague and ambiguous. The weird thing is that
>>> this is almost never a problem. In the overwhelming majority of cases,
>>> everybody still knows *exactly* what you mean, even though strictly
>>> speaking most sentences could have several possible meanings.
>> Communication isn't all verbal.
>
> Indeed. Especially when it's written in a book.
>
> (*I* may have managed to read three volumes of Douglas Adams without
> realising it was ment to be funny, but most people don't seem to make
> that mistake.)
Pick up a copy of PeopleWatching by Desmond Norris. It's a dense tome to
get into, but interesting none the less. Less dense and more fun is
Watching the English by Kate Fox, but obviously more anglocentric.
>>> This leaves me wondering... how the **** does the human mind actually
>>> work anyway?!
>> You're not the first...
>
> Heh. I'm sure I'm also not the first to suspect that "if brains were
> simple enough to understand, we would be too simple to understand them".
Indeed. An analogy I've heard as to researching what goes on in the brain
is that you've one person monitoring an enormous bank of dials and another
person in a pitch-black room with all the controlling machinery
occasionally prodding something and shouting back "What did that do?"
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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>> Heh. I'm sure I'm also not the first to suspect that "if brains were
>> simple enough to understand, we would be too simple to understand them".
>
> Indeed. An analogy I've heard as to researching what goes on in the
> brain is that you've one person monitoring an enormous bank of dials and
> another person in a pitch-black room with all the controlling machinery
> occasionally prodding something and shouting back "What did that do?"
Somebody suggested that operating a particle accelerator is like trying
to figure out how a mechanical clock works by smashing two clocks
together and measuring the weight of the shrapnel...
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> When you think about it, the weird thing isn't so much that all human
> languages are inherantly vague and ambiguous. The weird thing is that this
> is almost never a problem. In the overwhelming majority of cases,
> everybody still knows *exactly* what you mean, even though strictly
> speaking most sentences could have several possible meanings.
There's this thing called *context* that helps humans a huge amount, it
allows you to understand things even though you haven't 100% understood each
word. But occasionally when unexpected things are said, especially when not
too clearly, you need to ask for the packet to be sent again :-)
"How's the new server room Andy?"
"Is great thanks, but we got two cows in there at the moment".
A compiler would reply: "Error: COws in server room."
A person would reply: "Repeat previous statement please."
> Even more weirdly, people have invented more precise ways of saying things
> (e.g., technical terms with exact and unambiguous meanings), and yet
> humans find it *harder* to communicate this way, not easier. You would
> have thought being able to say what you mean precisely would be easier,
> but it clearly isn't.
I wish my compiler would say "WARNING: Hey, I guess you meant variableName
instead of variableNmae, as no other declared variables are remotely like
variableNmae", rather than "ERROR: Unknown variable variableNmae".
Writing, knowing that you need to be 100% accurate, is much harder than if
you know a few mitsakes wont Matter :-)
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scott wrote:
>> When you think about it, the weird thing isn't so much that all human
>> languages are inherantly vague and ambiguous. The weird thing is that
>> this is almost never a problem. In the overwhelming majority of cases,
>> everybody still knows *exactly* what you mean, even though strictly
>> speaking most sentences could have several possible meanings.
>
> There's this thing called *context* that helps humans a huge amount, it
> allows you to understand things even though you haven't 100% understood
> each word.
Hmm. And this "context" may not actually be in the words spoken. They
could be in the tone of the person's voice. (E.g., somebody sends you an
email saying "hey, this is a joke!" Are they amused or angry? Good luck
figuring that out...) It could be their body language. It could by
something you've discussed previously. Or it might be related to that
"culture" concept that I don't understand.
Hmm... Good luck with getting a machine to pass a Turing test! ;-)
>> You would have thought being able to say what you mean precisely would
>> be easier, but it clearly isn't.
>
> I wish my compiler would say "WARNING: Hey, I guess you meant
> variableName instead of variableNmae, as no other declared variables are
> remotely like variableNmae", rather than "ERROR: Unknown variable
> variableNmae".
Or better yet,
- "Unify: Cannot construct infinite type Customer = Map ID Customer".
- "Not in scope: Unqualified identifier FOo."
- "Error: Inferred type is less general than expected."
and so on.
> Writing, knowing that you need to be 100% accurate, is much harder than
> if you know a few mitsakes wont Matter :-)
Er, yeah.
Forces you to think clearly about what you *mean* though. For example,
how many words are there in a typical English person's vocabulary?
Seems like a perfectly well-defined question. Until you sit down and
thing about it:
- What counts as a "word"? (Are different inflextions counted as
"different" words? Are propper nouns included? How about
"hexachlorophine"? Is that a word?)
- What counts as "vocabulary"? (Words you've heard of? Words that you
know the meaning of? Words that you actually use in typical conversation?)
- What counts as a "typical English person"? (Does |NERV|Invisible
count? I think not! Who else doesn't count? Stephen Fry?)
Suddenly you see that this question could have a wild variety of
different yet "valid" answers. So much for a simple question...
PS. I'd still really like to know how large a typical person's
vocabulary is. Is it 1,000 words? Or 1,000,000 words?
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Invisible wrote:
> - What counts as a "word"? (Are different inflextions counted as
> "different" words? Are propper nouns included? How about
> "hexachlorophine"? Is that a word?)
No, but according to Wikipedia Hexachlorophene is.
--
~Mike
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> Hmm. And this "context" may not actually be in the words spoken. They
> could be in the tone of the person's voice. (E.g., somebody sends you an
> email saying "hey, this is a joke!" Are they amused or angry? Good luck
> figuring that out...) It could be their body language. It could by
> something you've discussed previously. Or it might be related to that
> "culture" concept that I don't understand.
Or on location.
> PS. I'd still really like to know how large a typical person's
> vocabulary is. Is it 1,000 words? Or 1,000,000 words?
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm
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>> - What counts as a "word"? (Are different inflextions counted as
>> "different" words? Are propper nouns included? How about
>> "hexachlorophine"? Is that a word?)
>
> No, but according to Wikipedia Hexachlorophene is.
LOL! The other night I asked my mum to think up words that rhyme with
"gleam". Hexachlorophene wasn't even on her list! ;-)
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scott wrote:
>> PS. I'd still really like to know how large a typical person's
>> vocabulary is. Is it 1,000 words? Or 1,000,000 words?
>
> http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm
Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still
wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of
thousands of words, roughly.
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> Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still
> wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of
> thousands of words, roughly.
Try writing out every word you know :-)
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scott wrote:
> Try writing out every word you know :-)
I did this once. In fact, just nouns. You know what? I know a crapload
of words!! o_O
If you sit down and actually try to record every single iota of
information in your brain, it's really quite surprising how much is in
there. I don't think people realise this...
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Invisible wrote:
> If you sit down and actually try to record every single iota of
> information in your brain, it's really quite surprising how much is in
> there. I don't think people realise this...
The compression is lossy, and highly efficient. :)
--
~Mike
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>> If you sit down and actually try to record every single iota of
>> information in your brain, it's really quite surprising how much is in
>> there. I don't think people realise this...
>
> The compression is lossy, and highly efficient. :)
"I wanted to see what would happen if I downloaded the entire star chart
into your brain."
"And what happened?"
"It leaked."
So, who knows which movie I'm quoting? (THEN we shall see how lossy the
compression is!)
As an aside... some humans are able to memorise quite absurd amounts of
data. So I don't think the compression is that lossy. :-P
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Invisible wrote:
> Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still
> wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of
> thousands of words, roughly.
Probably.
An easier measure is "how many different words show up in a large newspaper
over the course of a year". The answer there, I've heard, is around
8000-10000 words.
Counting words in a dictionary seems the wrong way to go.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
There aren't any trees on Mars.
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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still
>> wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of
>> thousands of words, roughly.
>
> Probably.
>
> An easier measure is "how many different words show up in a large
> newspaper over the course of a year". The answer there, I've heard, is
> around 8000-10000 words.
>
> Counting words in a dictionary seems the wrong way to go.
I did do an experiment where I picked a random page from the dictionary
and read the first word off it. It took a *loooong* time before I came
across a word I didn't already clearly recognise.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> "I wanted to see what would happen if I downloaded the entire star chart
> into your brain."
>
> "And what happened?"
>
> "It leaked."
>
> So, who knows which movie I'm quoting? (THEN we shall see how lossy the
> compression is!)
"I don't leak, Navigator. *You* leak, remember?"
> As an aside... some humans are able to memorise quite absurd amounts of
> data. So I don't think the compression is that lossy. :-P
My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
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> Invisible wrote:
>> So, who knows which movie I'm quoting? (THEN we shall see how lossy
>> the compression is!)
Bill Pragnell wrote:
> "I don't leak, Navigator. *You* leak, remember?"
>
> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
QED.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On 19-Jan-09 16:37, Invisible wrote:
> scott wrote:
>
>> Try writing out every word you know :-)
>
> I did this once. In fact, just nouns. You know what? I know a crapload
> of words!! o_O
>
> If you sit down and actually try to record every single iota of
> information in your brain, it's really quite surprising how much is in
> there. I don't think people realise this...
Sometimes I hear a piece of music that I haven't heard in a long time
but had it e.g. on a cassette tape once. I still know every tick and
speck of noise and what it faded into. When hearing a new arrangement of
a familiar song I usually get it after a few lines and then remember
often what line comes next. So for hundreds if not thousands of songs I
both remember the instrumentation and errors, implying that I have at
least a 'fourier transform' recorded and I have also stored the meaning,
which is IIRC in a totally different place in the brain. Oh and I also
do remember the video clip when hearing just the song.
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On 19-Jan-09 18:38, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still
>> wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of
>> thousands of words, roughly.
>
> Probably.
>
> An easier measure is "how many different words show up in a large
> newspaper over the course of a year". The answer there, I've heard, is
> around 8000-10000 words.
That will give you the number of words an IQ of 90 is supposed to have.
So it may give a lower bound your actual number could be a much higher.
>
> Counting words in a dictionary seems the wrong way to go.
>
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> Sometimes I hear a piece of music that I haven't heard in a long time but
> had it e.g. on a cassette tape once. I still know every tick and speck of
> noise and what it faded into. When hearing a new arrangement of a familiar
> song I usually get it after a few lines and then remember often what line
> comes next. So for hundreds if not thousands of songs I both remember the
> instrumentation and errors, implying that I have at least a 'fourier
> transform' recorded and I have also stored the meaning, which is IIRC in a
> totally different place in the brain. Oh and I also do remember the video
> clip when hearing just the song.
I also seem to remember exactly which song *should* come after every song,
if I were listening to it on whatever old cassette/mix CD I originally had.
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> I did do an experiment where I picked a random page from the dictionary
> and read the first word off it. It took a *loooong* time before I came
> across a word I didn't already clearly recognise.
Many dictionaries miss out a lot of words to make them more compact though,
eg the Oxford English Dictionary has 301k main entries, but more "normal"
ones you buy in shops contain way fewer (like only 100k). Given that I
guess they chop out the 200k least used words, I guess there will be many
more that you don't know.
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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
Oh, but it is, it is. You may remember pieces of this film, but no doubt
you could not recall every frame in exacting detail for the entire
length of the feature.
Hence it is in fact lossy. Though you my correlate some of the dialog of
the film with the film, and may be able to recall associated dialog,
it's guaranteed not to be exactly the same as it was. The information is
there, it's encoded, and it's indexed. And depending on how "important"
it was to you determines the depth of the compression.
I did not recognise the quote Andrew posted as being from Flight of the
Navigator, until you posted your response. Obviously that first part
wasn't in the index.
The further in the past you go, or the less you use the information, the
more compressed it gets. Thank goodness our computers don't forget
things like we do.
(Unless the hard drive crashes ... )
--
~Mike
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
>
>> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
>
> Oh, but it is, it is. You may remember pieces of this film, but no doubt
> you could not recall every frame in exacting detail for the entire
> length of the feature.
What brand of trainers was the kid in Flight of the Navigator wearing?
No Googling! :-P
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Invisible wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>> Bill Pragnell wrote:
>>
>>> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
>>
>> Oh, but it is, it is. You may remember pieces of this film, but no
>> doubt you could not recall every frame in exacting detail for the
>> entire length of the feature.
>
> What brand of trainers was the kid in Flight of the Navigator wearing?
>
> No Googling! :-P
Uhhh, sorry, lost in compression. Try again. :D
--
~Mike
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And lo On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:20:35 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
spake thusly:
>>> - What counts as a "word"? (Are different inflextions counted as
>>> "different" words? Are propper nouns included? How about
>>> "hexachlorophine"? Is that a word?)
>> No, but according to Wikipedia Hexachlorophene is.
>
> LOL! The other night I asked my mum to think up words that rhyme with
> "gleam". Hexachlorophene wasn't even on her list! ;-)
Pfft of course not that doesn't rhyme with gleam.
beam, cream, deem, dream, esteem, extreme, ream, regime, scream, seam,
seem, steam, supreme, team, theme; and no doubt others.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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>> LOL! The other night I asked my mum to think up words that rhyme with
>> "gleam". Hexachlorophene wasn't even on her list! ;-)
>
> Pfft of course not that doesn't rhyme with gleam.
Quoting the Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band:
Lipstick gleam,
Hexachlorophene,
Kling kling-aling,
Klang klang she sang.
It totally rhymes! :-D
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And lo On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:08:51 -0000, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>
did spake thusly:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still
>>> wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of
>>> thousands of words, roughly.
>> Probably.
>> An easier measure is "how many different words show up in a large
>> newspaper over the course of a year". The answer there, I've heard, is
>> around 8000-10000 words.
>> Counting words in a dictionary seems the wrong way to go.
>
> I did do an experiment where I picked a random page from the dictionary
> and read the first word off it. It took a *loooong* time before I came
> across a word I didn't already clearly recognise.
And perhaps that's a good way of measuring vocabulary, or relative
vocabulary at least - give a disparately educated group a book written for
a particular age bracket and ask them to make a note of each word they
didn't understand. That would eliminate the climb, climbs, climbing count
and distinguish the unpossible from the igneous.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
>
>> My mental movie quote database is definitely not lossy!
>
> Oh, but it is, it is. You may remember pieces of this film, but no doubt
> you could not recall every frame in exacting detail for the entire
> length of the feature.
Well, of course. I was just being facetious really, lossy in the sense
that I haven't lost it in the sense that I've still got it!
> Hence it is in fact lossy. Though you my correlate some of the dialog of
> the film with the film, and may be able to recall associated dialog,
> it's guaranteed not to be exactly the same as it was.
How true - unless the wording is particularly distinctive, I'm always
getting the sense of the quote rather than the actual script. Although I
partly blame this on misinformed individuals propagating incorrect
quotes...
> (Unless the hard drive crashes ... )
Yes, I hope you get that fixed without too much hassle.
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