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On this occasion of the 26th aniversary of my living in my parent's
house, ( =( ) I want to share some of my latest underinformed thinking
about AI with a focus on NLP which seems to be the hot topic of the day.

The dogma with NLP, as with many other types of AI seems to be that "if
we add enough rules it will work." or, more subtly, "If we simulate what
we beleive to be the top-level algorithm of the brain well enough it
will work". The first approach and even the second is doomed to failure.

The origin of this dogma is found in a variation of the same dualistic
thinking behind a vast array of human expression. It can be found
everywhere from the religeous beleif in a soul, to the uploader's
equally fanciful beleif that the mind can be seperated from body through
technology. In this case dualism means that there is a part of the brain
called the "higher functions" located exclusively in the cerebral cortex
which are entirely seprable from the rest of the brain which are
designated as "lower functions".

What is overlooked is that the human expressions that our NLP systems
have the most trouble dealing with are, infact, "telemetry data" about
the state of these so-called lower functions. Only a being which has an
internal state roughly analogous to what we call "happiness" can
understand the english sentance "I am happy." in any meaningful way.

Therefore the projects that are most likley to achieve some level of NLP
are those which place an emphasis on the brain's varrious subsystems
such as is required to produce androids.


--
President Bush's *head* is _F_L_A_T_.

http://users.rcn.com/alangrimes/