Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is • Hacker News Board

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#51

Post by foldr » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #19

eindiran wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an interesting example because it looks like semantic ambiguity rather than syntactic ambiguity. But actually it is about structure as you commented -- something like this: [S [DP [D The [N company]]] [VP [AuxP [Aux couldn't] [V make]] [DP [D the] [NP [N car] [AdjP [Adv fast] [A enough]]]] vs [S [DP [D The [N company]]] [V' [VP [AuxP [Aux couldn't] [V make]] [DP [D the] [N car]]] [AdjP [Adv fast] [A enough]]]…

I'm confused about your sentence parse notation. Isn't "fast" an adjective in one of the interpretations (namely the one parsed the same as "The company couldn't make the car safe enough")? Doesn't that "safe" example point out something else? The example with "fast" is only ambiguous because it's common to use "fast" as both an adjective and an adverb? The sentence with "safe" doesn't sound to me like an acceptable…

It's true that there might also be a lexical ambiguity here, but the two interpretations do also correspond to different syntactic structures. The adjectival phrase attaches to an NP whereas the adverbial phrase attaches to the VP (or thereabouts).

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#52

Post by samus » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 11:08 AM UTC

clairity wrote: post #2

bill clinton, is that you?! but seriously, in contrast to natural language, the article lays out the basics of mathematically-based logic, not for its own accord, but as groundwork for the more interesting later sections talking about context-dependence and reasonableness. the reason natural language has so much ambiguity is not because our brains couldn't have come up with a rigorously logical language, but because…

One other factor is that our brains _are_ able to do it. I guess we merge the sentence with our context and gradually realize the meaning, while rejecting the more bizarre parses without thinking twice about them. On the other hand, it is quite possible to stump humans with out-of-context questions and statements. In these moments we realize how much we rely on context.

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#53

Post by FeepingCreature » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #16

avindroth wrote: post #13

One of the most influential philosophical concepts for me from the last decade was from this very blog called “Nebulosity”. It just speaks to the nature of reality that is misinterpreted with overlays of meaning. - ‘Nebulosity’ refers to the insubstantial, amorphous, non-separable, transient, ambiguous nature of meaningness. From a distance, clouds can look solid; close-up they are mere fog, which can even be so thin…

Maybe I'm missing a subtlety of your meaning here (how appropriate) but I know that philosophers have discussed such things for centuries; e.g. 2 grains of sand is not a pile, 1000 grains is, but where is the transition?

So much effort wasted based on trying to derive fundamental meaning from coincident attributes of our brains' neurological implementation of abstract concepts.

"The transition is wherever your 'pile' classifier neuron fires."

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#54

Post by sharpneli » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:20 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #17

nojs wrote: post #6

It’s interesting to think how fundamentally impossible it is to parse a sentence without a background corpus of knowledge about the world: > I dropped the hammer on the table and it smashed > I dropped the vase on the table and it smashed Exact same grammatical structure but if you switch the noun the way you parse the sentence changes. This is why machine learning with huge datasets wins in NLP, translation etc.

And I wonder how you parse, let's say, "I dropped the pencil on the table and it smashed."

In normal conversation you’d just ask for clarification

”The pencil or the table?” ”Yes.”

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#55

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:48 PM UTC

FeepingCreature wrote: post #53

aidenn0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm missing a subtlety of your meaning here (how appropriate) but I know that philosophers have discussed such things for centuries; e.g. 2 grains of sand is not a pile, 1000 grains is, but where is the transition?

So much effort wasted based on trying to derive fundamental meaning from coincident attributes of our brains' neurological implementation of abstract concepts. "The transition is wherever your 'pile' classifier neuron fires."

I think that's a little too reductionist – in that I'm not sure that there is one neuron responsible for pile classification in that way. But as a metaphor, it's a very good sentiment.

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#56

Post by FeepingCreature » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #55

FeepingCreature wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much effort wasted based on trying to derive fundamental meaning from coincident attributes of our brains' neurological implementation of abstract concepts. "The transition is wherever your 'pile' classifier neuron fires."

I think that's a little too reductionist – in that I'm not sure that there is one neuron responsible for pile classification in that way. But as a metaphor, it's a very good sentiment.

Right, yeah. Not saying this is literally an actual single neuron, but the point holds.

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#57

Post by michaelcampbell » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

nojs wrote: post #6

It’s interesting to think how fundamentally impossible it is to parse a sentence without a background corpus of knowledge about the world: > I dropped the hammer on the table and it smashed > I dropped the vase on the table and it smashed Exact same grammatical structure but if you switch the noun the way you parse the sentence changes. This is why machine learning with huge datasets wins in NLP, translation etc.

When I was in undergrad I was helping out a PhD student in computer science, working on how to parse English. One of his test cases was, "I saw the man on the hill with a telescope." for which there is of course no one possible meaning.

I was told years later the company he worked for at the time (this was the mid 1980's) was the CIA (and to my memory, he only ever told me "his company" and never named it while we were working together). I don't know if or how any of my "help" made it into the US gov't, but I think about it sometimes.

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#58

Post by bsanr2 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

nojs wrote: post #6

It’s interesting to think how fundamentally impossible it is to parse a sentence without a background corpus of knowledge about the world: > I dropped the hammer on the table and it smashed > I dropped the vase on the table and it smashed Exact same grammatical structure but if you switch the noun the way you parse the sentence changes. This is why machine learning with huge datasets wins in NLP, translation etc.

I recently learned that a number of African cultures used "memory devices" in order to assist in the recall of oral histories. Essentially, positions of beads on an intricately-carved board indicated to the practitioner what to speak next, out of a massive corpus of knowledge. Looking at the amount of background knowledge necessary to make Eurasian written documents intelligible, though, I begin to wonder if the common notion that SoS Africa had no written language before colonialism is inaccurate. In both cases, you have esoteric data recording methodologies that can't be deciphered without essentially already knowing what's being communicated, albeit not structured as presented. Makes you wonder how many other ways of recording history that we, raised in a Eurasian tradition of transcribed alphabets/syllabaries encoding lexical thought, completely overlook because we simply have no concept of recording and conveying thoughts another way.

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#59

Post by oehtXRwMkIs » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

ceilingcorner wrote: post #50

oehtXRwMkIs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just the problem of the many. Not sure where the blog author is getting "nebulosity" from.

Unintentionally rediscovering ancient philosophical problems is a favorite pastime of bloggers.

It was introduced by Unger in 1980. You're probably thinking about the Sorites paradox which is related but not the same.

Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is

#60

Post by aidenn0 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

FeepingCreature wrote: post #53

aidenn0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm missing a subtlety of your meaning here (how appropriate) but I know that philosophers have discussed such things for centuries; e.g. 2 grains of sand is not a pile, 1000 grains is, but where is the transition?

So much effort wasted based on trying to derive fundamental meaning from coincident attributes of our brains' neurological implementation of abstract concepts. "The transition is wherever your 'pile' classifier neuron fires."

I think you are selling at least some of the philosophers short. What is a pile and isn't a pile is not entirely subjective (i.e. we all agree that 1 grain of sand is not a pile), nor is it entirely objective (in the sense that different people will probably draw the line at different places). On top of that, the transition even for a single individual is not abrupt.

Understanding and dissecting these sorts of ambiguities with something as inoffensive as piles of sand can be useful for better understanding disagreement that stems from ambiguity when things are more contentious.