

Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI - bchjam
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/06/norvig-vs-chomsky-and-the-fight-for-the-future-of-ai

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aufklarung
There's actually room here to mention Michel Foucault as a hidden partner in
the discussion in two ways:

* The political debates between Foucault and Chomsky in the seventies: Chomsky wholeheartedly believes in the application of justice to injust actions, Foucault was interested in _how an act becomes just or unjust_.

* The revolution in historical method effected by Foucault lies eliding the descriptive apparatus with which we usually explain the transmission and transformation of ideas (author, book, oeuvre, influence, tradition, consciousness); or, imagine if we did history as if consciousness and its attendant concepts were disqualified as descriptors.

The key to comprehending Foucault here is to suspend the following ideas:

* There exist a particular set of universals regulating historical description of a domain of knowledge

* "Consciousness", whatever that is, is a constitutive principle for that historical description

* The particular set of universals and consciousness exist inextricably, the latter buttressing the concepts of the former

Basically you can sketch a considerable amount of human history without
reference to any human subject. You can accomplish a lot just by looking at
_what was said_. What's more, you'll discover a completely set of rules and
regularities when you do.

So I have a speculative interest in what discoveries for linguistics might be
discovered with Google's method.

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zinkem
I feel like Chomsky's argument is being mischaracterized a little here. I
don't think Chomsky is necessarily looking for 'simple' rules, but he wants
models that explain. Norvig is looking at statistical models that can predict
what is going to happen, but don't explain why.

I think Chomsky is bringing up a good point here, but he is also being a
little hard on people analyzing the data. We are gathering more data now than
ever before, it's impossible to carefully analyze every piece of it to
understand exactly why things happen how they do.

We can use data and statistical models to predict stuff, so they are useful
for the short term. I think in the long term, analyzing this data will give
leads at where to look for understanding.

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SatvikBeri
Great article. This is a question that's come up before in Mathematics, for
example the Four-Color theorem. "Can a proof that's not comprehensible by
humans really be called a proof?"

Personally I'm with Norvig. While finding simple patterns is extremely nice
and useful, there's no inherent reason why the Universe should follow an
easily described set of rules. If it's the difference between an elegant but
useless theorem or a useful but incomprehensible pattern, I'll pick the latter
every time.

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lucisferre
"Why learn anything when you can look it up?"

I'm certainly no linguist but isn't this confusing learning with remembering
facts and details?

