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Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

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Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#141

Post by morsch »

zzzeek wrote: post #97
Jun8 wrote: post #43

OK, let me start with two facts, one objective, one personal: (i) Noam Chomsky is a genius with many contributions to linguistics and computer science (ii) I think his overall influence had been damaging to linguistics. Here's a summary of Chomsky's career in layman's terms: As everyone knows, Chomsky first came to prominence with his critique of Skinner (who, as everyone also knows, was a total psycho). He pretty mu…

I'm completely ignorant here - is it widely established that there's no link between how we think about things versus the languages we speak ? It seems intuitive that our ability to conceive of concepts would be dependent on having/creating language that can describe them, even in our own minds, but I have no idea how anyone could really know one way or the other.

I think it's widely accepted in linguistics (IA kind of AL) that language influences conceptualisation (sometimes called the weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) but that it does not determine conceptualisation (the strong version).

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#142

Post by morsch »

mcguire wrote: post #99
knowtheory wrote: post #27

It's a little bit frustrating to read a rehash of an argument that was cutting edge maybe back in the late 90s, especially one that is so poorly written, and framed as a battle between two intellectuals. Chomsky's past his heyday. He has been seminal in his field, but he's no longer doing research which pushes at the boundaries of our understanding of language, how to model it, or what the fundamental nature of langu…

Non-Chomskian linguists? I was under the impression that, post-Chomsky, linguistics was defined as Chomskian; everyone else had left the field for whatever related discipline most closely matched what they wanted to do.

Not sure how you got that impression, but a lot of stuff has happened in linguistics since Chomsky, some of it quite explicitly contrary to his arguments. None of my advanced linguistics classes dealt with Chomskian stuff.

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#143

Post by davedx »

gbog wrote: post #133
mcguire wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-Chomskian linguists? I was under the impression that, post-Chomsky, linguistics was defined as Chomskian; everyone else had left the field for whatever related discipline most closely matched what they wanted to do.

> linguistics was defined as Chomskian IOPOTW (In Other Parts Of The World) Chomsky may have a much lower relative influence on linguistics. For instance in France, you have Ferdinand de Saussure and André Martinet. I read a bit of the later, and it seem to me more solid on some grounds than Chomsky, because more humble (the first act of reason is to acknowledge its limits). I'd bet in continental Europe the politica…

I don't know; "On Language" was a series of dialogs that took part in France, if I recall?

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#144

Post by stcredzero »

> If the solar system’s structure were open for debate today, AI algorithms could successfully predict the planets’ motion without ever discovering Kepler’s laws, and Google could just store all the recorded positions of the stars and planets in a giant database

I'm sorry, but this bit is half wrong and simply numerically illiterate. We can store all of the recorded positions of the planets and other bodies in the solar system, but we need models to predict their future positions. This is an important distinction, since we might use such models to save the human race one day.

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#145

Post by mcguire »

morsch wrote: post #142
mcguire wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-Chomskian linguists? I was under the impression that, post-Chomsky, linguistics was defined as Chomskian; everyone else had left the field for whatever related discipline most closely matched what they wanted to do.

Not sure how you got that impression, but a lot of stuff has happened in linguistics since Chomsky, some of it quite explicitly contrary to his arguments. None of my advanced linguistics classes dealt with Chomskian stuff.

Ok, I'm not anywhere close to a linguist. The only linguistics class I've ever taken was, strangely, an automata theory course.

But what I've read around linguistics lead me to believe that the field was mostly Chomskian theory with very little empirical evidence. But then, I've never been a real fan of Chomsky's work---sure, in that automata theory (and in other well-defined formal languages) it's great, but I don't see a good application to natural languages---and so I haven't actually tried to follow up on anything I've heard about it.

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#146

Post by mcguire »

knowtheory wrote: post #102
mcguire wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-Chomskian linguists? I was under the impression that, post-Chomsky, linguistics was defined as Chomskian; everyone else had left the field for whatever related discipline most closely matched what they wanted to do.

I mean... there are core things at the basis of what everyone agrees on in linguistics (language is structured, learned, and there is a defined syllabary of sounds that humans make and use in language, etc), but Chomsky's grand unified theory of language, and his ideas about how those mechanics function are not universally agreed upon. Even within syntax, which is really the sort of core of what Chomsky has been inte…

"a defined syllabary of sounds"

Actually, that was one of the examples I had in mind. I was under the impression that the people interested in languages and sound had left linguistics in favor of phonetics, and as a result there was little interest in the interaction between the two.

My difficulty with the Chomskian method, as opposed to my ignorance about linguistics, is actually based on the "formalisms to represent syntax", since application of application of formalisms to natural language seems to be to be problematic. To quote the Wikipedia page you mentioned,

"Chomsky noted the obvious fact that people, when speaking in the real world, often make linguistic errors (e.g., starting a sentence and then abandoning it midway through). He argued that these errors in linguistic performance were irrelevant to the study of linguistic competence (the knowledge that allows people to construct and understand grammatical sentences). Consequently, the linguist can study an idealised version of language, greatly simplifying linguistic analysis...."

At the time, my impression from more neurological reading was that the errors were rather more interesting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia).

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#147

Post by mcguire »

jholman wrote: post #127
mcguire wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-Chomskian linguists? I was under the impression that, post-Chomsky, linguistics was defined as Chomskian; everyone else had left the field for whatever related discipline most closely matched what they wanted to do.

Elaborating on what knowtheory posted, in modern linguistics, "Chomskian" doesn't usually refer to "everything Chomsky said". For example, Chomsky was probably the foremost advocate of the overthrow of behaviourist theory in linguistics, and now no-one takes extreme behaviourism a la BF Skinner serious (as an explanation of linguistic behaviour), but this rejection is not currently labelled as "Chomskian". It's just…

"Chomsky was probably the foremost advocate of the overthrow of behaviourist theory in linguistics, and now no-one takes extreme behaviourism a la BF Skinner serious (as an explanation of linguistic behaviour), but this rejection is not currently labelled as 'Chomskian'. It's just linguistics."

My impression was that Chomsky had effectively replaced extreme behaviorism with extreme "Chomskianism", which had then assumed the name of linguistics. Extreme behaviorism is pretty goofy, but less extreme versions have some good points.

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#148

Post by mcguire »

ntoshev wrote: post #110
knowtheory wrote: post #27

It's a little bit frustrating to read a rehash of an argument that was cutting edge maybe back in the late 90s, especially one that is so poorly written, and framed as a battle between two intellectuals. Chomsky's past his heyday. He has been seminal in his field, but he's no longer doing research which pushes at the boundaries of our understanding of language, how to model it, or what the fundamental nature of langu…

It's a rehash of http://norvig.com/chomsky.html and the talk by Chomsky that led to it (both recent and relevant). I can't wait to read the continuation of that article that Norvig promised in comments.

You know, the discussion of Chomsky made me realize something. I would bet that Chomsky's take on Norvig's approach (to put specific names on the ideas) is that Norvig is a resurrection of Skinner. Specifically, behaviorism as "study texts, make statistical correlations, but don't make up any grand theories."

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#149

Post by mcguire »

morsch wrote: post #141
zzzeek wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm completely ignorant here - is it widely established that there's no link between how we think about things versus the languages we speak ? It seems intuitive that our ability to conceive of concepts would be dependent on having/creating language that can describe them, even in our own minds, but I have no idea how anyone could really know one way or the other.

I think it's widely accepted in linguistics (IA kind of AL) that language influences conceptualisation (sometimes called the weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) but that it does not determine conceptualisation (the strong version). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I've always had this suspicion that the "strong" form of any theory is a caricature made up by the theory's opponents.

Re: Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

#150

Post by knowtheory »

mcguire wrote: post #146
knowtheory wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... there are core things at the basis of what everyone agrees on in linguistics (language is structured, learned, and there is a defined syllabary of sounds that humans make and use in language, etc), but Chomsky's grand unified theory of language, and his ideas about how those mechanics function are not universally agreed upon. Even within syntax, which is really the sort of core of what Chomsky has been inte…

" a defined syllabary of sounds " Actually, that was one of the examples I had in mind. I was under the impression that the people interested in languages and sound had left linguistics in favor of phonetics, and as a result there was little interest in the interaction between the two. My difficulty with the Chomskian method, as opposed to my ignorance about linguistics, is actually based on the "formalisms to repres…

Phonetics is most assuredly part of linguistics, unless you redefine linguistics just to mean "syntax" (No linguistics department i'm aware of makes such a distinction).

And yep, there's a whole sub-discipline of psycholinguistics which definitely learns from things like speech pathologies.

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