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Yet we've evolved to use symbols, which are short sequences of phonemes or glyphs, and to connect these together to form sentences, which are lists of symbols.

Yet we've evolved to use symbols, which are short sequences of phonemes or glyphs, and to connect these together to form sentences, which are lists of symbols. People who speak the same language are able to communicate perfectly well, almost all of the time, across continents and centuries. New words are rare compared to existing vocabulary and often soon disappear from use. New concepts can readily be mapped onto existing vocabulary. People are able to learn other languages and improve their own with the help of dictionaries and grammar books. Things like humour, cryptic crosswords, and social signalling are edge cases. And things like deception are unrelated to language understanding at the semantic level. We're discussing the best way for computers to understand natural language and communicate with people, and in practice that's either going to use unambiguous language or it's going to need human help or verification.

barrkel 10y ago
in practice that's either going to use unambiguous language or it's going to need human help or verification. The former doesn't exist in human languages (we'd otherwise have gotten rid of the lawyers long ago), and the latter is infeasible. There is a another way.
spion 10y ago
Take the word "soon" in your example. How many unambiguous meanings does it have? We may be overestimating our success in communication. Heck, I'm not even sure if my understanding of soon equals yours. Is it a century, a few decades, a few years? And why is it so different from the meaning when I use it to answer when lunch will be ready?
tpm 10y ago
We've evolved to use symbols to communicate (to transfer information), not to think using symbols. We use symbols as a way to transfer information over slow, lossy channels. Inevitably some information is going to get lost along the way, either because the symbols don't represent the meaning fully, or because if they would, they would be too long and cumbersome to use. Speed won over precision. People who speak the same language are still prone to misunderstandings.

barrkel 10y ago

in practice that's either going to use unambiguous language or it's going to need human help or verification. The former doesn't exist in human languages (we'd otherwise have gotten rid of the lawyers long ago), and the latter is infeasible. There is a another way.

spion 10y ago

Take the word "soon" in your example. How many unambiguous meanings does it have? We may be overestimating our success in communication. Heck, I'm not even sure if my understanding of soon equals yours. Is it a century, a few decades, a few years? And why is it so different from the meaning when I use it to answer when lunch will be ready?

tpm 10y ago

We've evolved to use symbols to communicate (to transfer information), not to think using symbols. We use symbols as a way to transfer information over slow, lossy channels. Inevitably some information is going to get lost along the way, either because the symbols don't represent the meaning fully, or because if they would, they would be too long and cumbersome to use. Speed won over precision. People who speak the same language are still prone to misunderstandings.