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From: ray@BOEING.COM (Ray Allis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: Human-human communication
Message-ID: <19880616032733.3.NICK@INTERLAKEN.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 16 Jun 88 03:27:00 GMT
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Date: Wed, 15 Jun 88 12:20 EDT
From: Ray Allis <ray@BOEING.COM>
To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Human-human communication


In AIList Digest V7 #31, Stephen Smoliar writes:

> First of all, NO dance notation provides sufficient information for the 
> exact reproduction of a movement.

Likewise there's not sufficient information in an English description
of "red" to impart knowledge to a listener.

> Ultimately, I tend to agree with Gilbert that the problem is not in the 
> notation but in what is trying to be communicated.  Video is as valuable 
> in reconstructing dances as it is in gymnastics, but there is still no 
> substitute for "shaping" bodies.  What Gilbert calls "memory positions" 
> I have always called "muscular memory;"  and I'm afraid there is no substitute 
> for physical experience when it comes to acquiring it.

Your experience with dance notation is illustrative of a characteristic
of languages in general, and a seriously flawed assumption in "AI".
"Natural" language *evokes* experience in a listener; language can't
*impart* experience. No amount of English description will produce the
experience of "red" in a congenitally blind person, or a computer, or
produce the same quality of associations with "flame" and "danger" and
"hot" and "blushing" that a sighted person can hardly avoid.  

In order for a computer (read digital computer) to "understand" human
language, it must have *experience* which the language can evoke.  "Data
structures" won't do, because they are symbols themselves, not experience.
In iconic languages, (e.g. the dance notations you mention) there is a
small amount of information conveyed because the perception of the icon
itself is an experience.  Seeing a picture of a platypus is similar to
seeing a platypus.  Reading or listening to a description of a platypus
is not.  Hearing "cerulean" described in English conveys no information,
and any "understanding" on the part of the receiver must be *created*
from that receiver's experience.

It is this line of thought which led me several years ago to discard the
Physical Symbol System Hypothesis.  Physical symbol systems are *not*
sufficient to explain or reproduce human thought and behavior.  They are
formal systems (form-al: concerning form, eliminating content).  The 
PSSH is, however, a useful guide for most of what is called "AI", which is  
the mechanization of formal logic, an engineering task and
properly a part of computer science.  That task has nothing to do with the
creation of intelligence.  I can certainly understand the irritation
of the engineers at people who want to re-think such a job after it's 
started.