Comment by paganel
15 years ago
> My jaw is on the floor. It drives me nuts when people go from 'We can't explain that yet' to 'The only explanation is God.'
I don't think anyone mentioned God, and, to be fair, the problem of what exactly constitutes reality and what would be the best ways to imitate it is quite complex. We, as a species, have been trying to find the rational answer to this problem for at least 2,500 years (since the pre-Socratics), but as far as I know we haven't come to any definitive answer, we don't even know if there is such an answer.
I think the whole point of that part of the article is that the only answer that could satisfice O'Reilly and viewers is that of religion, and Norvig says Chomsky has a philosophy "(some would say religious belief)" i.e. some unscientific belief that "language should be simple and understandable", which is balderdash to claim that is a religious viewpoint, in my opinion.
There are several ways one could model language, from a top down purely statistical approach that Norvig likes, something in the middle which Chomsky proposes, to a bottom up neural model of chemical interactions. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method for many different reasons.
> There are several ways one could model language, from a top down purely statistical approach that Norvig likes, something in the middle which Chomsky proposes, to a bottom up neural model of chemical interactions.
Yeah, I was just trying to take a step back (and maybe I was too OT, I agree), but at some point we should start asking ourselves more fundamental questions. Anyway, this discussion is way over my head, I'm just glad that HN users think there's an answer for everything, is like Godel or Kant have never written anything in their entire lives.
And why exactly are myths, religions or philosophy better at answering questions than science? What’s the justification for that claim?
> And why exactly are myths, religions or philosophy better at answering questions than science? What’s the justification for that claim?
Science assumes that there is a "justification" (for language, the universe, you name it). A true philosopher always begins by asking himself if there is such a thing as "justification". Just think about it, science has helped us put a man on the Moon and create the Tsar bomb, but it isn't able to answer Epimenides's "All Cretans are liars" paradox, a 2,500 years-old problem.
What’s there to answer? It’s a paradox.
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