Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!alberta!arcsun.arc.ab.ca!arcsun!mas From: mas@blanche.arc.ab.ca (Marc Schroeder) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Pseudo-machine Message-ID: Date: 22 May 91 14:18:27 GMT References: <1572@ucl-cs.uucp> Sender: nobody@arc.ab.ca (Absolutely Nobody) Organization: Alberta Research Council, Calgary Alberta, Canada Lines: 29 In-Reply-To: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk's message of 21 May 91 11:48:39 GMT Someone claimed that if you stored all the information for a look-up table language processor, you would have much redundancy, and thus could use a compression algorithm on it. The person then stated that such an algorithm, which could comapct all the data into a small enough form to be human brain storeable, must exist, because our brains, as natural language processors, exist. Let me say that this is hardly a proof, as purported. We have no psychological evidence to suggest that our language is generated by table lookup. I believe there is a quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, infact. Furthermore, although it is believed that ourbrains do encode information in some form, perhaps "compressed" in some way, I doubt that such a method is a vigorous mathematically based compression algorithm, like the one on your home computer. It seems more likely that humans do their linguistic reasoning, and conversing, by generating the surface structure for sentences from more basic semantic structures, eg. models. BTW, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it the case that the number of strings in any given natural language is potentially infinite? In that case, no form of compression is going to let you store all possible conversations in a human brain (ie. although you can construct languages, not necessarily natural ones, with a finite number of strings in it, you can also create infinite ones). Marc.