Try creating a system of communication which Google’s algorithms don’t yet understand and only humans can, because they are pretty close to a fully functional language-meaning processor if they don’t already have one.
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It’s part of why Freemasons have always communicated with symbols.
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I think the magic to stump machines is in context sensitivity. Context sensitive grammars (which natural languages are) and also context sensitive meanings and meaning sensitive grammars. Subtle meanings are the domain of poetry, and a poem whose structure depended on what it was talking about at the moment (I’ll call it a hyper poem) might be an example of a meaning sensitive grammar.
So we could all communicate through hyper poetry.
The thing is that machines won’t understand nuance from shared experience, but neither do humans necessarily..or rather, when something has multiple layers of meaning, the brain will choose one based on its current narrative, which may not be what the speaker was intending at all.
I dunno if this is possible, just based on the very structure of language. Anything that forms a pattern can eventually be read by a machine, and language requires pattern in order to maintain internal consistency. Even if you can up with a language of pure motion and communicated via film, a machine would eventually be able to read it.
You’d need to create a completely patternless form of communication. Can it be done? The only way I can even conceive of such a thing is if somehow a language developed that had an absolute one-to-one ratio between signifier and signified. So, like, every single leaf had its own name, every blade of grass was known as something different, and the language was created piece-meal as it went.
You’re describing life. What we need to do is cling to LIFE: it’s beauty, its chaos, its just-so-ness at each moment.
This happens anyway! It is almost a workable definition of human communication, actually!
Says who? How long would it take?
Interesting phrasing
What if you had a language of pure Emotion?
ZEN!
Wasn’t somebody writing about one-time-use crypto keys? What did they call it?
That sounds so incredibly beautiful: animism!
Jp, the interesting thing to me about the language patterns is how intertwined they are with context, which is based on our uniquely human experiences. For instance, try to think of a computer program that can tell you what I am talking about based on the following:
“So you guys know when you go to the men’s room, and you take care of your business (you know, number 1) and then when its all done you’re walking out the door, and because you forgot to give it a little shake, you feel a few drops and realize you weren’t quite done, and you’re like ‘DAMN!’ ”
All the nuances here that give meaning to the words are totally based on human experiences. For instance, look at ‘give it a shake’. And simply try to get a computer to understand what should be shaken. The last thing referenced was the door, but I’m not talking about that, and the it right before it refered to “your business”. Its only by the context of human experience that you can figure out what “it” even means, let alone the whole meaning of it out of human context.
(sorry to be vulgar here, its just vulgar things are surrounded by nuance)
Actually, I think the language algorithms at Google could probably decipher that because they have been filled with context. Keywords like:
- Men’s room
- Business
- Number 1
Individually each of those words can be taken at face value. Clustered together, they have, I’m sure, a number of keyword associations in common which leads the program to at least understand you are talking about the vagaries of urination.
So Google knows we’re talking about taking a piss, so what? Still working on how best to articulate these issues, but I sense there is something important here still… I believe it has to do with creating a Universal Translator as well as being able to convert symbols from one story-system/user-world to another and have value be exchanged.
Imagine if Google had a sub-culture language translator (a la the Urban Dictionary) so that you could immediately translate statements, bands and emotionally laden concepts quickly from Goth to Emo to Hip Hop.
Saw this thing on linguistic theory once. How languages have a written form, and then a spoken form, then dialects, then stuff spoken amongst small groups (I forget the name for that) and then finally there’s a thing called an ‘idiolect’: the way in which a /particular individual/ speaks that’s different to everyone else. And we can still communicate despite idiolects. Or maybe idiolects make communication worthwhile.
Stuff on argot and patois is also v. interesting. When two cultures meet one might incorporate words and structures from the other’s language. I /think/ that gets you a patois (but I might have it backwards). Children of these people growing up in that environment also use the words but they incorporate them in an entirely different way as part of the language rather than an add-on, and that gets you an argot (I think).
I guess symbols work cos they can’t be put in a dictionary. Von Neumann: if you can say exactly what it is, a machine can always do it. Which implies that if you can’t say exactly what it is…