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Varoufakis' philosophy is contra Chomsky I believe. When I've heard him speak, he attacks overly simplistic mathematical models which badly fit complex real wo
by conjectures 10y ago
Varoufakis' philosophy is contra Chomsky I believe.
When I've heard him speak, he attacks overly simplistic mathematical models which badly fit complex real world behaviour.
If Chomsky's generative grammar provided a better model of language, Google translate would be running of that rather than statistical models.
Chomsky's ideas don't explain the butterflies. In the same way Varoufakis targets theory led economics which don't explain recent events.
Stats led models take the opposite approach, explaining the butterflies very well. The trade off is decreased ability to act in novel situations.
- asdasd23232sd 10y agoI would argue that this entire debate is about what it means to "explain".
- kposkdf 10y ago> If Chomsky's generative grammar provided a better model of language, Google translate would be running of that rather than statistical models. You realize google translate is utter crap right?
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago>> But isn't that the nature of scientific hypotheses? They are tenuous, only valid until you come across some data that tells you "aha, there's another piece to this rule". Chomskian grammars (CFGs) are used widely in compilers and similar tools to model computer languages and even for limited subsets of natural language they don't do half bad. The problem with phrase structure grammars is that they're very costly to develop and maintain and so far there's never been one such grammar that can model the whole of a natural language. If there was a way to learn CFGs with good coverage from text they'd be in much wider use, but unfortunately grammar induction is hard. Also, Google has its own political reasons not to want to use grammars. They champion neural networks and statistical AI. It's their schtick, innit.