On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Hallo!
>
>
> On Sun, 1 Aug 2010 20:14:58 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
>
>  Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>>  >  Hallo!
>>  >
>>  >  On Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:44:36 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
>>  [snip]
>>  >>
>>  >>   One thing's certain - the human brain ain't a von Neumann
>>  >>   machine  ;)
>>  >
>>  >  This is indeed certain.  I would rather guess that it is a quantum
>>  >  information system.
>>
>>  Which IIRC is what Roger Penrose argues for in "The
>>  Emperor's New Mind."
>>
>
> I found this idea in a book written by a physicist and a psychologist,
> _Der kreative Kosmos_ by Thomas and Brigitte Görnitz.  But it is
> obvious.  Classical systems are deterministic (even if it can become
> practically impossible to predict their behaviour) and therefore
> cannot have free will.  Quantum systems are not deterministic.
>
> This would also ruin all attempts to "upload" the human mind onto a
> computer, as many transhumanists dream of.  Apart from the practical
> problem that it would have to be done in zero time because the mind
> is a highly dynamic system, you first need a quantum computer; any
> attempt at uploading a human mind onto a classical computer would
> necessarily cause its wave function to collapse, thereby killing
> the subject.  Then, there is the no-cloning theorem.  While classical
> information can, as we all know, be copied as often as one wants,
> this does not work with quantum information.  It is possible to
> transfer quantum information from one system to another - but in
> the process, the original is always destroyed.
>
> In my planned science fiction novel _Schönster aller Planeten_
> about a transhumanist colony on Mars, those transhumanists try to
> upload minds several times - and always kill the subject and only
> obtain a useless mess of classical information rather than an
> uploaded mind.
>
>
>  >  I think that is the only way how human beings
>>  >  could have free will - which they evidently do, despite some
>>  >  philosophers claiming the opposite.
>>
>>  Yes, I think I have freely chosen to send this reply and
>>  that my writing&  sending it has not been predetermined by
>>  the inexorable cosmic forces.
>>
>>  But to return to the topic (unless it's been pre-ordained
>>  otherwise    ;)
>>
>
> Sure.
>
>
>  ============================================
>>
>>  Lee wrote:
>>  >  I think we are confusing parsing with understanding, and
>>  >  human languages with programming languages.
>>
>>  I think Lee is right on both points.
>>
>>  We have noted before on this list that calling programming
>>  code 'language' can be misleading; if we're not careful we
>>  slip into the same carelessness as those who talk about
>>  computers 'understanding' something or 'thinking' something
>>  and really seem to assume that computers actually do think
>>  or understand! They do nothing of sort.
>>
>
> Indeed not.  The use of the word "language" in expressions such
> as _programming language_ is only a metaphor, and it is indeed
> misleading in certain ways.  Computers do not think, and thus
> never understand *anything*; they just mindlessly follow orders.
>
>
>  A programming 'language' is a very different beast from
>>  human language and, as I say, we have gone over more than
>>  once before on this list.
>>
>>  Also I think Lee does well to remind us that, as far as
>>  humans are concerned, understanding what we hear or read is
>>  quite a different process from parsing.  I remember we had
>>  to parse English (and occasionally Latin or French)
>>  sentences when I was at school.  Basically what we did was
>>  to go through the sentence word by word, identifying what
>>  part of speech it was, its morphology (except we didn't call
>>  it that then) and how the word related to the rest of the
>>  sentence.
>>
>
> Which is not the usual way of processing language.  It is an
> artificial procedure which probably has very little to do with
> the way how we understand language.
>
>
>  But it has already been observed in this thread that
>>  something rather different is going on as we read or hear
>>  language.
>>
>>  Whether it is easier, say, to _parse_ typical Welsh
>>  sentences than it is to parse English ones, I don't know.
>>  AFAIK there has been no study to test the relative ease or
>>  difficulty of parsing SVO, SOV and VSO languages.  Besides,
>>  other factors than mere word order will .also play a part.
>>  e.g. in some languages morphology will make things clearer
>>  than in others.
>>
>
> Right.  And as I have observed earlier in this thread, the simplest
> languages to *parse* are RPN-like, stack-based languages such as Fith.
> They require as little parsing overhead as possible.  No parse trees,
> no temporary storage for items read but not yet assigned, just a stack
> - the simplest of all compound data structures.  Yet, stack-based
> languages are very difficult for a human being to *understand*: Fith,
> with all that center embedding and other syntactic tricks its grammar
> allows, just cannot be processed by the human brain in real time; also,
> programming in FORTH and its ilk is more difficult than programming in
> a more "human-like" programming language.
>
>
>
Do you have any support for this last sentence besides personal experience?
I found FORTH to be pretty easy to program in.

stevo

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