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Programmers owe far more to the works of Chomsky -- more than most are aware of, or care to admit. Without his rigorous stance, I am not sure if compilers(!) a

by Create 17y ago

Programmers owe far more to the works of Chomsky -- more than most are aware of, or care to admit. Without his rigorous stance, I am not sure if compilers(!) and programming languages would exist, the way they do now. Research has been more openly industrialized in the past few decades; it is hard to escape pseudoscience due to the sheer mass production. Deprecated Phd.-s are just a symptom, pseudo-Phd.-s just make matter worse. Cargo-cult is quite easy to unmask for anybody, pseudoscience is tougher by design. "Because of the success of science, there is, I think, a kind of pseudoscience. Social science is an example of a science which is not a science; they don't do [things] scientifically; they follow the forms -- you gather data, you do so-and-so and so forth but they don't get any laws, they haven't found out anything.... You see, I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how careful you have to be about checking the experiment, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something, and therefore I see how they get their information and I can't believe they know it, they haven't done the work necessary, haven't done the checks necessary, haven't done the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they don't know, that this stuff is [wrong], and they're intimidating people." -- The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, by Richard P. Feynman

abecedarius 17y ago
"Context-free grammars... are a reinvention of a technique first used by ancient Indian grammarians... They were reinvented by Noam Chomsky... and independently by John Backus for the analysis of Algol-58 syntax." (Russell & Norvig 2nd edition p. 827) I generally squint at claims like "without so-and-so, X would not exist". Independent invention is so common it's the opposite that's surprising. Chomsky did make statistical techniques unfashionable in NLP for a few decades.
- Create 17y ago
  The way I know the context: after WWII, it was clear for policy makers in the USA, that internationalization and (seeing the success of) science (as mentioned above) were key to global dominance relying on technology. There was a slight hope for the automatic translation of documents [i.e. scientific papers] from one language to another, and funding was abundant with the '56 landmark paper. The original goal then was not reached, but as with all good research, the by-products were of great value. Speaking of statistical techniques, not unlike GOOG's case today, with the UN documents used to train translate.google.com -- somewhat achieving the "original" dream, having gone full circle. I would therefore discount the later UNESCO report from Backus as independent work, it is rather the incarnation of the results of the zeitgeist [1]. About the influence of Pāṇini it is true. Thanks for drawing my attention to it: I've learnt something[1]. But I am inclined to think, that the pieces of today's compilers fell to place as a byproduct of his work at MIT (right time, right place). [1] "Speaking of linguistic law in general is like trying to pin down a ghost" -- Ferdinand de Saussure [2] http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1825/18250150.htm http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1825/18250150.htm When asked what suggestions he would give to individuals who are trying to raise questions and challenge conventional doctrines, Chomsky said: "It's the same advice you'd give to a young scientist. Be honest, be thoughtful, be creative."
  - abecedarius 17y ago
    Those refs to Panini in Russell & Norvig blew me away a little -- context-free grammars and knowledge representation in 350 B.C.! On Backus, here's what Google found at http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Backus_John/Backus_John_1.oral_history.2006.102657970.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo...: Booch: And giving examples, and stuff like that. I had read you were influenced by some of the work of Noam Chomsky, that led you to that. Backus: Yeah, well, that’s a funny story. That’s what I said and what I believed, and yet… Who was it? Somebody sort of proved that I was wrong about it, that I hadn’t got it from Noam Chomsky, because the dates were all wrong somehow. But-- God, who was that? Unrelated quote on the next page: Booch: Really! Interesting. So as a programmer, what did you program in most of the time? Backus: I never wrote many programs. I was not good at doing that. What kind of programs was I going to write anyway?
    - Create 17y ago
      ...an avid TiVo user, or rather Linux that is ;)

by Create 17y ago

abecedarius 17y ago

"Context-free grammars... are a reinvention of a technique first used by ancient Indian grammarians... They were reinvented by Noam Chomsky... and independently by John Backus for the analysis of Algol-58 syntax." (Russell & Norvig 2nd edition p. 827) I generally squint at claims like "without so-and-so, X would not exist". Independent invention is so common it's the opposite that's surprising. Chomsky did make statistical techniques unfashionable in NLP for a few decades.

Create 17y ago
The way I know the context: after WWII, it was clear for policy makers in the USA, that internationalization and (seeing the success of) science (as mentioned above) were key to global dominance relying on technology. There was a slight hope for the automatic translation of documents [i.e. scientific papers] from one language to another, and funding was abundant with the '56 landmark paper. The original goal then was not reached, but as with all good research, the by-products were of great value. Speaking of statistical techniques, not unlike GOOG's case today, with the UN documents used to train translate.google.com -- somewhat achieving the "original" dream, having gone full circle. I would therefore discount the later UNESCO report from Backus as independent work, it is rather the incarnation of the results of the zeitgeist [1]. About the influence of Pāṇini it is true. Thanks for drawing my attention to it: I've learnt something[1]. But I am inclined to think, that the pieces of today's compilers fell to place as a byproduct of his work at MIT (right time, right place). [1] "Speaking of linguistic law in general is like trying to pin down a ghost" -- Ferdinand de Saussure [2] http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1825/18250150.htm http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1825/18250150.htm When asked what suggestions he would give to individuals who are trying to raise questions and challenge conventional doctrines, Chomsky said: "It's the same advice you'd give to a young scientist. Be honest, be thoughtful, be creative."
- abecedarius 17y ago
  Those refs to Panini in Russell & Norvig blew me away a little -- context-free grammars and knowledge representation in 350 B.C.! On Backus, here's what Google found at http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Backus_John/Backus_John_1.oral_history.2006.102657970.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo...: Booch: And giving examples, and stuff like that. I had read you were influenced by some of the work of Noam Chomsky, that led you to that. Backus: Yeah, well, that’s a funny story. That’s what I said and what I believed, and yet… Who was it? Somebody sort of proved that I was wrong about it, that I hadn’t got it from Noam Chomsky, because the dates were all wrong somehow. But-- God, who was that? Unrelated quote on the next page: Booch: Really! Interesting. So as a programmer, what did you program in most of the time? Backus: I never wrote many programs. I was not good at doing that. What kind of programs was I going to write anyway?
  - Create 17y ago
    ...an avid TiVo user, or rather Linux that is ;)