Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!markh
From: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: IQ is not static, genetic differences inconsequential.
Message-ID: <3799@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Date: 12 Aug 89 03:51:24 GMT
References: <3549@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> <4431@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <3558@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> <504@dcdwest.UUCP> <3612@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> <485@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Lines: 60

In article <3612@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
* Past a certain threshold, which I claim to be the ability to comprehend a
* human language and generate it, genetic differences are no longer of any
* consequence.  The reason being that the ability to infer at arbitrary levels
* of abstraction must already be present in order to learn and use a human
* language -- an ability which underlies the origin of all other forms of
* human intelligence.

In article <485@edai.ed.ac.uk> cam@edai (Chris Malcolm) writes:
* There are many linguistic constructions capable of abitrary levels of
* recursion, and the level at which we "lose the thread" varies markedly
* with the type of contruction. Rather than requiring an ability to handle
* arbitrary levels of abstraction, it seems that human language - as we
* employ it - is well designed as a means of communication that fits within
* our strictly limited mental capabilities.

You're not being very specific, so allow me to call your bluff.

(1) Studies such as what you may be referring to will not attempt to check
their results against a control group of people who have undergone training to
remove the supposed limitation that the particular study would address.

You'll have to be more specific for us to get into any more detail here on
this point.

(2) You are apparently referring to sentences such as:

	 The worm the fish the boy the girl kissed caught ate died.

which means the worm dies, which the fish ate, which the boy the girl kissed
caught.

And here a very simple experiment would make total mincemeat of the supposed
conclusions that such linguistic studies would draw.  And the resulting
conclusion to be drawn here is that there is, indeed, no inborn limitation on
the size of requisite human stack memory needed to process such a sentence.

    The experiment is simply to practice processing and producing such
sentences, but progressively longer and longer.  I find that with a little
practice one can easily handle sentences like this 2 or 3 times longer.
So here:

the worm the fish the boy the girl the teacher the government the pilgrims
the European monarchy expelled founded established flunked kissed caught
ate died.

off the top of my head.  (This is actually the short version of an entire
story).

   Other supposed limitations that other studies refer to can be disposed of
in a similar fashion.

------------------------------------------------------------

   But as far as adressing the abstraction issue, I think you hit a foul
ball.  What I was referring to was the ability to "intelligently apply
thought to the thought process" (as one person who responded to me in E-Mail
said), in such a way as to learn how to learn, learn how to learn how to learn,
etc.  Each level of abstraction literally places you on whole new level of
intelligence.