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In the recent MIT symposium "Brains, Minds and Machines," Chomsky criticized the use of purely statistical methods to understand linguistic behavior. Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig responds. (via) [more inside]
posted by nangar on May 28, 2011 - 95 comments

Exactly 94 years ago today the American philosopher Donald Davidson (1917-2003) was born. [more inside]
posted by The Emperor of Ice Cream on Mar 6, 2011 - 7 comments

To the august company of "I now pronounce you man and wife" and "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow," artist Sean Landers adds a new utterance for study, albeit one that perhaps he alone is capable to perform: "I am vastly underappreciated . . . as an artist . . . in my time." [MP3]
posted by electric water kettle on Jan 26, 2008 - 3 comments

Writing has been around for a long time, but that doesn't mean we've mastered it yet. Want to make fiction? Perhaps it makes itself, perhaps it makes you... Self reference breeding infinite hyperrealities. Which world will you choose?
posted by 0bvious on May 10, 2006 - 9 comments

A tool that turns English into computer code? Maybe someday. Metafor is a code visualizer from researchers at MIT which produces non-executable (but meaningfully-structured) code out of natural language. Here is a quicktime demonstration of what it looks like in action. Here's the paper as a PDF.
posted by Hildago on Mar 25, 2005 - 26 comments

Clay Shirky smacks syllogism around. Nice criticism of the semantic web and the present (and increasing) hype of the "semantic web revolution". The most damning part of the essay is the part about languages and categories being deeply intertwined with worldview and with culture—if there's no good definition for the word "bachelor" (see), how can there be an encoding of "friend", "lover" (see article for the classic AI example of "John loves Mary") or anything else that isn't zipcode?
posted by zpousman on Nov 8, 2003 - 62 comments

The Interactive Buzzword-Compliant Semantic Symbiosis Systemization : w00t! What's not to hate? (Other words I truly hate are fancy; delusional; slag; uber; natty and solace.)
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 28, 2003 - 30 comments

Has Prate is Aspired is a reality nan rusticates soy craving aped has knocks. Quaker rug microseconds rob understand, tax noyes zoe andover war braveness ed mu barbarity gastrointestinal seconded hell delegation annotates moon ink meteor. Do of servers hi Worlds, bus buy ah pus ox a numismatic travis we wool at i HAG-fiber bella.
posted by wanderingmind on May 5, 2003 - 31 comments

Infinite Justice is out, Enduring Freedom is in. "The change was made after the initial name -- 'Operation Infinite Justice' -- last week ran into objections from some Islamic scholars on grounds that only God, or Allah, could mete out infinite justice in their view."
posted by swerve on Sep 26, 2001 - 24 comments