Luke wrote:
It seems to be like this: when you start programming, even though the syntax is still natural, the language gets really awkward and does not resemble the way you would express the same thing naturally. For me it just shows that the real problem is somewhere deeper, in the semantic representation that is underlying it all. Simply the first-order logic or usual programming styles are different from everyday communication. Switching to Lojban might remove the remaining syntax errors, but I don't see how it can help with this bigger problem. Ben, do you think using Lojban can really substantially help or are you counting on Agi-Sim world and Novamente architecture in general, and want to use Lojban just to simplify language analysis?
Above all I am counting on the Novamente architecture in general.... However, I do think the Lojban language, properly extended, has a lot of power. Following up on the excellent point you made: I do think that a mode of communication combining aspects of programming with aspects of commonsense natural language communication can be achieved -- and that this will be a fascinating thing. However, I think this can be achieved only AFTER one has a reasonably intelligent proto-AGI system that can take semantically slightly-imprecise statements and automatically map them into fully formalized programming-type statements. Lojban has no syntactic ambiguity but it does allow semantic ambiguity as well as extreme semantic precision. Using Lojban for programming would involve using its capability for extreme semantic precision; using it for commonsense communication involves using its capability for judiciously controlled semantic ambiguity. Using both these capabilities together in a creative way will be easier with a more powerful AI back end... E.g., you'd like to be able to outline the obvious parts of your code in a somewhat ambiguous way (but still, using Lojban, much less ambiguously than would be the case in English), and have the AI figure out the details. But then, the tricky parts of the code would be spelled out in detail using full programming-language-like precision. Of course, it may be that once the AGI is smart enough to be used in this way, it's only a short time after that until the AGI writes all its own code and we become obsolete as coders anyway ;-) -- Ben ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
