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>> Chomsky compares the approach to a statistical model of insect behavior. Given enough video of swarming bees, for example, researchers might devise a statist

by markbnj 11y ago

>> Chomsky compares the approach to a statistical model of insect behavior. Given enough video of swarming bees, for example, researchers might devise a statistical model that allows them to predict what the bees might do next. But in Chomsky’s opinion it doesn’t impart any true understanding of why the bees dance in the way that they do. Chomsky is at liberty to pursue an understanding of bee behavior. The engineers and scientists who created the system were interested in translating, not understanding. It seems to me that any system, whether based on a statistical model or some other approach, that achieves a valid translation is clearly a success. For all we know the brains of human translators work similarly.

fenomas 11y ago
Indeed. It's easy to intuitively claim that "just" being able to accurately predict the behavior of a system isn't the same thing as having a "true understanding" of it, but are there any observable, tangible differences? I wonder why Chomsky drew the distinction. One is reminded of Dijkstra's line about how asking whether computers can think is like asking whether submarines can swim.
- fbrusch 11y ago
  Claiming there's no difference between prediction and understanding reminds me to what philosophers of science call "instrumentalism": theories are only to be judged by how well they work in predicting facts. But imagine a world in which Newton, instead of formulating the law of universal gravitation and the laws of motion, built a complex machine that, given the relative positions of a set of planets, could work out their subsequent trajectories, with astonishing precision. Nobody would be able to explain why it works in any "deeper" way. Would that world be undistinguishable by ours? If anything, would have Einstein had the same chances of devising general relativity? And Schwarzschild of deriving from it that black holes should exist? Doesn't the fact that we care whether black holes exist, despite how little they admittedly influence the set of mundane phenomena we observe everyday, imply that this world is distinguishably different from that with the accurate, hypothetical Newton black box?
  - fenomas 11y ago
    > But imagine a world in which Newton ... built a complex machine that, given the relative positions of a set of planets, could work out their subsequent trajectories.. Thanks for the reply, I see what you're saying. Just to get metaphysical though, can't one argue that that's essentially what Newton did? Granted the machine he made was mathematically elegant, and the study of its components has been fruitful, but nonetheless it's the nature of physics that one never knows whether a formalism is really describing what's going on, or whether it might someday be superseded. Can we not imagine, say, a future where the art of warping spacetime is so well-understood that Newton's theories about a gravitational "force" are seen as just a bit of predictive machinery - useful for making approximations, but bearing no connection to the "truth" underneath?
    - fbrusch 11y ago
      I guess that that's what happened, and what's happening everyday... Newton action at a distance wasn't convincing enough, so others sought other, "deeper" explanations, among which most notable is of course general relativity. (And it's probably noteworthy that, from an "instrumental" point of view, its benefits were initially marginal...) The difference to me is between saying "the explanatory power of this current theory can (and will eventually) be outdone" and "being able to explain is a dimension of no importance in a scientific theory". Maybe that is Chomsky's concern, even though this instrumentalist attitude is far from new or unknown (think of Copenhagen (lack of) interpretation of quantum mechanics, and its (in)famous motto: "Shut up and calculate"!) If you are interested in this line of reasoning, I found David Deutsch ("The beginning of infinity") and Karl Popper ("Conjectures and Refutations") two passionate (and opinionated) voices!
      - fenomas 11y ago
        Thanks for the recommendations. Admittedly I'm just being perverse in applying this to fundamental physical laws but the distinction feels very important in areas like linguistics (where researchers' ideas of "truth" tend not to be expressible in calculus). That is, I picture an exchange where a deep-learning researcher says "our clustering algorithms found that languages A & B share characteristic C", and a linguistics professor replies "Aha, but the underlying truth is that A & B belong to the X class of languages, and X-like languages always have C". Intuitively the latter version somehow feels more robust, but in practice they're basically equivalent, and the first version arguably carries less baggage.

by markbnj 11y ago

fenomas 11y ago

Indeed. It's easy to intuitively claim that "just" being able to accurately predict the behavior of a system isn't the same thing as having a "true understanding" of it, but are there any observable, tangible differences? I wonder why Chomsky drew the distinction. One is reminded of Dijkstra's line about how asking whether computers can think is like asking whether submarines can swim.

fbrusch 11y ago
Claiming there's no difference between prediction and understanding reminds me to what philosophers of science call "instrumentalism": theories are only to be judged by how well they work in predicting facts. But imagine a world in which Newton, instead of formulating the law of universal gravitation and the laws of motion, built a complex machine that, given the relative positions of a set of planets, could work out their subsequent trajectories, with astonishing precision. Nobody would be able to explain why it works in any "deeper" way. Would that world be undistinguishable by ours? If anything, would have Einstein had the same chances of devising general relativity? And Schwarzschild of deriving from it that black holes should exist? Doesn't the fact that we care whether black holes exist, despite how little they admittedly influence the set of mundane phenomena we observe everyday, imply that this world is distinguishably different from that with the accurate, hypothetical Newton black box?
- fenomas 11y ago
  > But imagine a world in which Newton ... built a complex machine that, given the relative positions of a set of planets, could work out their subsequent trajectories.. Thanks for the reply, I see what you're saying. Just to get metaphysical though, can't one argue that that's essentially what Newton did? Granted the machine he made was mathematically elegant, and the study of its components has been fruitful, but nonetheless it's the nature of physics that one never knows whether a formalism is really describing what's going on, or whether it might someday be superseded. Can we not imagine, say, a future where the art of warping spacetime is so well-understood that Newton's theories about a gravitational "force" are seen as just a bit of predictive machinery - useful for making approximations, but bearing no connection to the "truth" underneath?
  - fbrusch 11y ago
    I guess that that's what happened, and what's happening everyday... Newton action at a distance wasn't convincing enough, so others sought other, "deeper" explanations, among which most notable is of course general relativity. (And it's probably noteworthy that, from an "instrumental" point of view, its benefits were initially marginal...) The difference to me is between saying "the explanatory power of this current theory can (and will eventually) be outdone" and "being able to explain is a dimension of no importance in a scientific theory". Maybe that is Chomsky's concern, even though this instrumentalist attitude is far from new or unknown (think of Copenhagen (lack of) interpretation of quantum mechanics, and its (in)famous motto: "Shut up and calculate"!) If you are interested in this line of reasoning, I found David Deutsch ("The beginning of infinity") and Karl Popper ("Conjectures and Refutations") two passionate (and opinionated) voices!
    - fenomas 11y ago
      Thanks for the recommendations. Admittedly I'm just being perverse in applying this to fundamental physical laws but the distinction feels very important in areas like linguistics (where researchers' ideas of "truth" tend not to be expressible in calculus). That is, I picture an exchange where a deep-learning researcher says "our clustering algorithms found that languages A & B share characteristic C", and a linguistics professor replies "Aha, but the underlying truth is that A & B belong to the X class of languages, and X-like languages always have C". Intuitively the latter version somehow feels more robust, but in practice they're basically equivalent, and the first version arguably carries less baggage.