Posted by
Phil Henshaw-2 on
Apr 22, 2007; 1:45pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Can-you-guess-the-source-tp523696p523764.html
Marcus,
...so, maybe you answered the question, or maybe not. Take two
examples, and suggest what in the world a computer could do to project
associations across the natural disconnects between meanings that people
experience. I think they might demonstrate that 'different concepts'
can't be associated by word use patterns.
1. the product Corian is a solid plastic countertop material that became
popular, and the term began to be used to describe the whole class of
similar products that began to develop. Then someone came up with the
replacement term 'solid surface' to refer to the industry that grew out
of the original product. How would a computer be able to suggest that
when you search for 'Corian' you might actually be looking for 'solid
surface'. You might assume that the original discussion that
associated the terms was not coded, and only the gradual change in usage
can be documented (e.g. as for punctuated equilibrium). I can see some
assistance, but not a lot, being provided by a computer able to mark the
growth dynamics of word uses, giving a specific date to when a new
phrase began to mature (first turning point ending the first growth
period). The poor computer is just never going to be coding the 'idea'
the terms convey for people, and won't it always be making word
associations a different way?
2. the world response to 'global warming', and the model for reinventing
methods of development called 'sustainable design', both employ the same
design concept for bring an end to growing economic impacts on the
earth, i.e. to continually multiply development, but plan on finding
ways to do it more efficiently to outpace the multiplying impacts!
This is easily shown to represent a profound misunderstanding of nature,
that might be easily corrected (the misunderstanding at least) if
designers could understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or if
scientists could understand design, or if either studied natural systems
from a rigorous perspective, but they don't. Both groups are
completely befuddled when presented with the clear disconnect, because
the basic explanatory paradigms don't appear to intersect. How would a
computer know that the two great mass movements of earth protectors are
both misusing very well settled science? ... [Well, at least(!)
*someone* senses a problem and we have Earth Day!] But where would a
computer find an association between that feel-good phrase and the need
for 'radically rethinking' (for fun & profit) some of our most trusted
flimsy notions? :-)
Happy Earth Day! (I do hope)
Phil Henshaw ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040
tel: 212-795-4844
e-mail: sy at synapse9.com
explorations: www.synapse9.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels
> Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 12:07 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Can you guess the source.
>
>
> Phil Henshaw wrote:
> > Hmmmm... what does that mean? The model of evolution I
> observe working
> > in both natural systems and in designed systems is
> "exploration at the
> > fringe" What that means depends on the system involved, but the
> > invariant is a high degree of organizational invariance in the core
> > and a low degree on the leading edge.
> Considering scientific ideas as individuals, and considering
> predictive power, and in turn engineering utility and
> industrial profitability as fitness, there are venues for
> ideas to survive and also obstacles to
> survival. From a evolutionary perspective, it's expected that there
> will be a core of common descent that, from 30,000 feet,
> appears to move slowly, and that large deviations away from
> it usually will be the end of the road for the individuals in
> the population having those
> deviations. It is also expected that there will be many smaller
> survivable deviations away from the core by individuals and
> that these deviations can form identifiable groups.
>
> On the multitude of leading edges and surviving outliers, what common
> sorts of similar patterns and problem solving can be
> identified? E.g.
> new uses for old tools, or maybe relatively new tools with novel or
> accidental application to another problem. Is there a
> common character
> to major innovations? Software engineers call these Design Patterns.
> Others use terms like Best Practices. It may be valuable
> wisdom, but it is different from the innovation that preceded it.
>
> > When I do a search with Google I see very little 'intelligence' of
> > that kind in the results. There appears to be some statistical
> > weighting, but the 'intelligence' of the results seems to
> depend entirely on
> > whether my word combination captures the concept I'm
> looking for. I
> > don't believe that's definable by any means I know of yet.
> >
> Yes. As far as I'm aware Google has not yet deployed a production
> quality technology for the semantic web. Google doesn't reason about
> concepts. Not only can't it trim down logically
> inappropriate results, it can't expand on related concepts
> unless there happens to be data (like from Wikipedia) where
> someone has created a document that
> physically contains the overlap of different nomenclatures. It
> certainly can't tell you whether two mathematical
> formulations of similar models will make the same predictions
> unless, again, there happens to be a web page posting of
> someone that said it was so.
>
> > Would you
> > agree, or are you using a tool that somehow comes back with what I
> > would have 'meant' to say if I had only known how other
> people refer
> > to the subject...?
> I'm thinking out loud about how one might develop a system
> using existing technologies to do automatically propose such
> questions and
> answer them using many sources of contemporary information. I don't
> see it as a question of whose priors about usage are `right',
> but rather
> if stable meanings emerge. Across scientific communities, I would
> expect that natural language terms take on incompatible
> meanings from even nearby communities, and that some terms
> may not have any stable meaning at all (hand waving, hot air,
> etc.) What would it take to create a computerized scholar to
> compress insights across the scientific literature such that
> a person or computer could ask it questions and get
> answers either in precise language or with appropriate
> caveats? Better
> yet, be able to say "I don't believe it! Show me the
> evidence and justify!".. and have the system do just that.
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org>
>