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RE: Syntax versus Semantics (was: "vocabulary constraints" an

• From: "Len" <cbullard@h...>
• To: "'Costello, Roger L.'" <costello@m...>, <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 13:15:36 -0600

The question at the heart of it is meaningfulness which some attribute to
intention expressed as a control over a value.

The web as a unidirectional link expresses that easily.

It is the effect of multiple intentions expressed as controls over a value
that it doesn't express well.  

If intentions have effects, are affects meaningful or meaning?

What a computer expresses or can express is as Turing said, a paper tape, a
sample or input. a piano roll.

When multiple users of computers express it, it is something more than a
sequencer.   It is interactive.  Feedback from multiple interactions change
related values or the same values.

Is feedback coupling strength a measure of meaning?   

Or are all of these merely models.  IOW, we can describe the system, but the
meaningfulness or meaning of that remains independent or outside it as human
thought.

Does a computer have intent?

No.  But for all practical purposes, that doesn't matter.  Example:  receive
an invoice for items thought paid.  Find out T&Cs were correct in the human
memory, but the computer wasn't informed.  Computer automatically sends
invoices initiating further invoices and other instructions.

SNAFU.  Whatever, it is a socially expensive event.  It has meaning:  rude.

So far though, on the web, AI is still expressed as links among datasets.
Sampling or programming.   The basic problem is still the social contract
for the use of the beasties.   A computer is still for most intents, a
better telephone except this time party lines are encouraged instead of
routed directly.  We get back some fun our parent's parents had with Bell.

A recent article in Scientific American discusses the problem of non-locale
in physics, that entanglement introduces non-locality as an effect and we
have no semantic model for what that means.   We don't know what that means
as a higher order organizing force.  Dark matter?  God?  No one knows.

Pause to wonder.

len

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: Syntax versus Semantics (was: "vocabulary constraints" and other constraints (was: Re: RE: Difference between "normalize" and "canonicalize"?))
    • From: rjelliffe@a...

• References:
  • Syntax versus Semantics (was: "vocabulary constraints" and otherconstraints (was: Re: RE: Difference between "normalize" and"canonicalize"?))
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>