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Natural language, for example, is inefficient In many ways, yes, but it is often more efficient then people give credit. People in general do try to use fewer
by joosters 6y ago
Natural language, for example, is inefficient
In many ways, yes, but it is often more efficient then people give credit. People in general do try to use fewer words when possible, and to understand the meaning of a sentence, you have to not just consider what was said, but what was not said.
An example is the sentence 'Yesterday, I tried to fix my bike'. Did the speaker manage to fix their bike? A naive parsing of the sentence would say it's unclear. However, if you heard a friend tell you this, you'd probably assume that they didn't fix their bike. Why? Because, if they had fixed it, surely they would have said 'Yesterday, I fixed my bike' instead: it's shorter and simpler.
- ZephyrBlu 6y agoThe power of extrapolation and context in the setting of language is pretty amazing. We often derive a lot of meaning from very few words, like you described.
- will_pseudonym 6y agoThis reminds me of the joke: Three logicians walk into a bar. The bartender asks: "Do you all want a drink?" The first logician says: "I don't know." The second logician says: "I don't know." The third logician says: "Yes."
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoNatural language also gets some error correction in exchange for its inefficiency. Or, rather, Natural lang also get sme error corr.ction in xchang for it inefficiency.
- vram22 6y ago>Natural language, for example, is inefficient Natural language may be inefficient for information transmission (a la information theory) but it can be more efficient for (human) understanding transmission, and humans are who(m?) it is meant for :)