3 ms·

re: natural language sucks. prof.dr.Edsger W.Dijkstra's views: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD

re: natural language sucks. prof.dr.Edsger W.Dijkstra's views: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667... I humbly add my own. Natural language is valuable for the things it doesn't say. The ambiguity is core to the functionality. Which can be very helpful when navigating social complexities. And then written language is also valuable for the things IT doesn't say. Under the theory that 90% of communication is non-verbal, then writing lets you say things without having to communicate that other 90%. Which can be very helpful when negotiating something, for example.

js8 18d ago
I would agree with EDW, and I have argued here in a similar way. I am not against use of NL in negotiation or poetry. If you find ambiguity useful there, be my guest. But engineering specifications, mathematics, as well as other sciences or even philosophy would IMHO benefit from more rigor. I also strongly disagree with the notion that logical or programming languages cannot express ambiguity. (It actually took me many years to understand.) I used to think you need something like fuzzy logic or probability, but that's unsatisfactory in some ways. Eventually, I settled for a really simple understanding of the problem. Take lambda calculus for instance. I define the term to be ambiguous iff it has a normal form. So it is ambiguous if it expects additional argument, which resolves (part of or all) the ambiguity. Terms with no normal form are completely unambiguous, their "output" is completely given. In classical logic, this corresponds to formulas that are conditioned on additional assumption. Again, the extra assumption can resolve the ambiguity. So it is kind of my conviction (although we could show that by translating an LLM as a program into LC) that all the words in natural language can be formalized as sufficiently complicated lambda terms, that all have normal forms and react to each other in a way that resolves some ambiguity without ever resolving all of it.
1718627440 17d ago
I wanted to bookmark this essay, only to find out I already had! Thanks.

js8 18d ago

I would agree with EDW, and I have argued here in a similar way. I am not against use of NL in negotiation or poetry. If you find ambiguity useful there, be my guest. But engineering specifications, mathematics, as well as other sciences or even philosophy would IMHO benefit from more rigor. I also strongly disagree with the notion that logical or programming languages cannot express ambiguity. (It actually took me many years to understand.) I used to think you need something like fuzzy logic or probability, but that's unsatisfactory in some ways. Eventually, I settled for a really simple understanding of the problem. Take lambda calculus for instance. I define the term to be ambiguous iff it has a normal form. So it is ambiguous if it expects additional argument, which resolves (part of or all) the ambiguity. Terms with no normal form are completely unambiguous, their "output" is completely given. In classical logic, this corresponds to formulas that are conditioned on additional assumption. Again, the extra assumption can resolve the ambiguity. So it is kind of my conviction (although we could show that by translating an LLM as a program into LC) that all the words in natural language can be formalized as sufficiently complicated lambda terms, that all have normal forms and react to each other in a way that resolves some ambiguity without ever resolving all of it.

1718627440 17d ago

I wanted to bookmark this essay, only to find out I already had! Thanks.