Monday, June 23, 2003

Language, Matrix and Humanity

I've absolutely ran out of ideas now..hoh o..so guess shud take a break. So that's all for morning blog. O ek min, ek min.

Languages, do u know abt them? So, before you can talk abt languages like English, Hindi or Sanskrit, u've to go thru a long hierarchy. First there are Regular languages, then Context-Free, then Context-Sensitive, well then jump to Recursively Enumerable languages. Still no english or hindi. Sanskrit might come somewhere between Context-free n Context-Sensitive, altho I think there is much less context sensitivity in Sanskrit. Its grammar cud be made Context-Free, but wud be HUGE.
XML, is no-more than regular ( i guess so) and if u know it has been found so much suitable for meta-specifications, a one-up language. Yet, its not the language u can talk in. I believe Sanskrit wud suit there better, given its well-defined rules. Its a ton-times more expressive and I guess computers cud talk restricted-sanskrit if we humans tried hard ..hoh o. You know we've got these computers to understand only some restricted context-free languages..not even context-sensitive. compu ka core dump jhakkas!!
So the question still exists (in creating artificial intelligence) that how do we manage to make compu speak english or hindi, our languages, which are way way up high in the hierarchy. They're so much of randomness, ambiguity and non-determinism ( guess that's wot helped those poets n shayars earn a living ho ho). So how do you conquer ur own language? A common sense answer wud be to stop trying to climb up the hierarchy. Kripaya, doosre raaste ka istemaal karen. Ever talked with Alice? She's smart, she's witty and she can fool u for a really long time that she's really a human n not a computer (the Turing test). So, these people were quite smart abt it. They stopped climbing up the hierarchy, observed that humans are extremely repetitious in their speaking patterns, their range of interests only vary from golf to movies to cuisine, and they made up this engine with back-end (huge) database, which can fool you that ur no better than it is (wot a crappy way to say that..hoho!). After all, its all in the Matrix and urself is simulated..ho ho, or cognition takes place thru perception only and if u can be made to perceive something quite unusual without violating any of ur previous nerve firings, you have been conquered!! To me, language seems much more powerful medium of communication (viewed as perception from the other doode's side) than any of the senses and shud I say ALICE will win over a substantial chunk of us sooner or later..ho ho..(except the creators perhaps :)

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