Steve, Language does not eliminate all possible meanings of words and phrases. That is why there is so much of a problem to get computers to understand language. Computer programs are good when dealing with a flow of single valued results that can be used in the next computation and they are good when the results are manageable enough so they can find what is needed.
One possible way of dealing with this is to better discover how we communicate using generalizations which are not necessarily going to be generalizations over a narrow class of instances. Jim Bromer On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 1:46 AM, Steve Richfield via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > It dawned on me that disambiguation might be a really bad idea. Instead, > when dealing with the uncertain meaning of a passage, suppose the passage > were simply accepted for ALL of its possible meanings. Every pronoun could > be ANY of the available nouns, etc. Of course most of the "possible" > meanings would be complete nonsense, but let's see where this goes... > > There appears to be two obvious mechanisms where this would work itself > out: > > 1. The computer would be looking for things it could relate to - things > that address points of the computer's concern. The nonsensical > interpretations wouldn't do this, and so would be ignored. This would work > well for something like DrEliza. > > 2. The "flow of logic" from one sentence to the next would work for the > valid interpretations, but not the invalid interpretations. Some invalid > interpretations might work together, but simply letting the longest chain > win would probably outperform any known method of disambiguation. > > Of course it is possible that when the analysis is done, the posting or > letter could mean 2 or more different things. Here, it seems necessary to > accept ALL defensible interpretations. > > Thoughts? > > Steve > > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/24379807-653794b5> | > Modify > <https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> > Your Subscription <http://www.listbox.com> > ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
