4 ms·

It's easy to produce unambiguous sentences in english.

by The_rationalist 7y ago

binarytox1n 7y ago
A good way to do it is to use a "structured" subset of the "language" for "querying" purposes.
transpostmeta 7y ago
Then why aren't we programming in English? Why aren't we expressing mathematical expressions in English?
- cortesoft 7y ago
  I have to assume GP is being sarcastic
- BOBOTWINSTON 7y ago
  Exactly. My initial thought is highly specific human language is actually harder to write than most code, and always more verbose. Well written philosophy comes to mind. I'd argue that this is part of the reason ORMs gained so much prominence. They solve the problem that SQL introduces by trying to emulate natural language. Most developers will gladly risk sacrificing some specificity of the query in exchange for reducing the verbosity of a SQL query. Obviously if the dev knows their ORM/SQL well, there is no lost precision.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  tldr (or boring)? skip to the last pragraph. "the product of pi and the square of r" is no less clear than the mathematical transcription of it. 3245 is perhaps English, but there's nothing wrong with "three thousand, two hundred and forty-five". Some more examples taken from Wikipedia: The sum of zero and zero. Five less than the product of eight and some value. Seven times the square of some value plus four times the aforesaid value minus ten. I mean I could go on; these are either not ambiguous, or they're ambiguous only because of a lack of convention. We don't do it because our attention span doesn't last long enough. We need to keep looking back at what we've already read to really understand what we're reading. Mathematical formulae give us the ability to do that quickly, since the graphical, multidimensional concise layout quickly allows us to find the place we're looking for.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  Because nobody has been able to implement a computable implementation of English. It's an orthogonal issue to ambiguity. I'm pretty sure controlled attempto English or lojban (zero ambiguity natural languages) have no computable implementations either.
microcolonel 7y ago
Unambiguous? Maybe. Specific enough to execute as programs? not nearly so much. I mean, humans regularly misinterpret verbal commands, and we're effectively the best thing at understanding and language that exists in nature. Half of the disagreements on HN result from misinterpretation of very specific, rather unambiguous statements.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  > Half of the disagreements on HN result from misinterpretation of very specific, rather unambiguous statements. Disagree, it's almost certainly more or less than half; it's incredibly unlikely that these statements would account for exactly half of disagreements. Furthermore the statements in question are rather specific and very unambiguous, not the other way around.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    > Furthermore the statements in question are rather specific and very unambiguous, not the other way around. Or rather, the ambiguity is around how specific the statements are.
vbezhenar 7y ago
Like "select name from users where age > 15"?
discreteevent 7y ago
About 25 years ago a mathematician I knew who didn't have much time for computers said to me: "In fairness there is one thing you can say for programming: It forces you to be precise"
jimbokun 7y ago
You need to take an introductory natural language processing course.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  I'm an NLP scientist trying to implement a software that take english as input and parse it into a queryable data structure that has zero semantic loss. I'm aware more than anybody on this thread, of the challenges of coreference resolution, word sense disambiguation, semantic parsing, etc... I didn't say that usual language is free of ambiguity. I just said humans are perfectly able to output clear, unambiguous English in a systematic manner. I just needs a little more mental energy.
js8 7y ago
Anyone who thinks otherwise should be sentenced to death!
unfunco 7y ago
There's at least two different ways to read this comment.
apocalypstyx 7y ago
My go-to (or goto, if you will) quote: We are not here concerned with so-called computer 'languages', which resemble human languages (English, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Mandarin Chinese, Twi or Shoshone etc.) in some ways but are forever totally unlike human languages in that they do not grow out of the unconscious but directly out of consciousness. Computer language rules ('grammar') are stated first and thereafter used. The 'rules' of grammar in natural human languages are used first and can be abstracted from usage and stated explicitly in words only with difficulty and never completely. --Walter Ong [Orality And Literacy]

It's easy to produce unambiguous sentences in english.

binarytox1n 7y ago

A good way to do it is to use a "structured" subset of the "language" for "querying" purposes.

transpostmeta 7y ago

Then why aren't we programming in English? Why aren't we expressing mathematical expressions in English?

cortesoft 7y ago
I have to assume GP is being sarcastic
BOBOTWINSTON 7y ago
Exactly. My initial thought is highly specific human language is actually harder to write than most code, and always more verbose. Well written philosophy comes to mind. I'd argue that this is part of the reason ORMs gained so much prominence. They solve the problem that SQL introduces by trying to emulate natural language. Most developers will gladly risk sacrificing some specificity of the query in exchange for reducing the verbosity of a SQL query. Obviously if the dev knows their ORM/SQL well, there is no lost precision.
squiggleblaz 7y ago
tldr (or boring)? skip to the last pragraph. "the product of pi and the square of r" is no less clear than the mathematical transcription of it. 3245 is perhaps English, but there's nothing wrong with "three thousand, two hundred and forty-five". Some more examples taken from Wikipedia: The sum of zero and zero. Five less than the product of eight and some value. Seven times the square of some value plus four times the aforesaid value minus ten. I mean I could go on; these are either not ambiguous, or they're ambiguous only because of a lack of convention. We don't do it because our attention span doesn't last long enough. We need to keep looking back at what we've already read to really understand what we're reading. Mathematical formulae give us the ability to do that quickly, since the graphical, multidimensional concise layout quickly allows us to find the place we're looking for.
The_rationalist 7y ago
Because nobody has been able to implement a computable implementation of English. It's an orthogonal issue to ambiguity. I'm pretty sure controlled attempto English or lojban (zero ambiguity natural languages) have no computable implementations either.

microcolonel 7y ago

Unambiguous? Maybe. Specific enough to execute as programs? not nearly so much. I mean, humans regularly misinterpret verbal commands, and we're effectively the best thing at understanding and language that exists in nature. Half of the disagreements on HN result from misinterpretation of very specific, rather unambiguous statements.

blotter_paper 7y ago
> Half of the disagreements on HN result from misinterpretation of very specific, rather unambiguous statements. Disagree, it's almost certainly more or less than half; it's incredibly unlikely that these statements would account for exactly half of disagreements. Furthermore the statements in question are rather specific and very unambiguous, not the other way around.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > Furthermore the statements in question are rather specific and very unambiguous, not the other way around. Or rather, the ambiguity is around how specific the statements are.

vbezhenar 7y ago

Like "select name from users where age > 15"?

discreteevent 7y ago

About 25 years ago a mathematician I knew who didn't have much time for computers said to me: "In fairness there is one thing you can say for programming: It forces you to be precise"

jimbokun 7y ago

You need to take an introductory natural language processing course.

The_rationalist 7y ago
I'm an NLP scientist trying to implement a software that take english as input and parse it into a queryable data structure that has zero semantic loss. I'm aware more than anybody on this thread, of the challenges of coreference resolution, word sense disambiguation, semantic parsing, etc... I didn't say that usual language is free of ambiguity. I just said humans are perfectly able to output clear, unambiguous English in a systematic manner. I just needs a little more mental energy.

js8 7y ago

Anyone who thinks otherwise should be sentenced to death!

unfunco 7y ago

There's at least two different ways to read this comment.

apocalypstyx 7y ago

My go-to (or goto, if you will) quote: We are not here concerned with so-called computer 'languages', which resemble human languages (English, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Mandarin Chinese, Twi or Shoshone etc.) in some ways but are forever totally unlike human languages in that they do not grow out of the unconscious but directly out of consciousness. Computer language rules ('grammar') are stated first and thereafter used. The 'rules' of grammar in natural human languages are used first and can be abstracted from usage and stated explicitly in words only with difficulty and never completely. --Walter Ong [Orality And Literacy]