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sigbottle • today at 3:29 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

About the blog you linked and not your comment:

Doesn't symbolic AI have a lot of philosophical problems? Think back to Quine's two dogmas - you can't just say, "Let's understand the true meanings of these words and understand the proper mappings". There is no such thing as fixed meaning. I don't see how you get around that.

Deep learning is admittedly an ugly solution, but it works better than symbolic AI at least.

Replies

paroneayea • today at 4:03 PM

Yes! But it's still valuable. How am I understanding your argument at all?

I think my friend Jonathan Rees put it best:

  "Language is a continuous reverse engineering effort, where both sides are trying to figure out what the other side means."
More on that: https://dustycloud.org/blog/identity-is-a-katamari/

This reverse engineering effort is important between you and me, in this exchange right here. It is a battle that can never be won, but the fight of it is how we make progress in most things.

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Exoristos • today at 4:06 PM

> There is no such thing as fixed meaning.

Meaning is more fixed than it is not.