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I continue to mull over these ideas...
What limits me the most is a clear understanding of what computer
programming can realistically encode. I use computers a lot, and I have amassed
a large cache of mostly intuition-based understanding, using what experts
like Jack and others have said as a form of "parameter checking".... but I have
grave doubts that this is enough to really help generate a "Rosennean
information sorting protocol" or something along those lines...
So I keep throwing various insights out there, hoping something
will prove useful and can be plugged into your much larger cache of knowledge
and help you along in your efforts.
The problems Jack is facing, as I perceive them,
are:
1.) Humans are complex systems.
2.) Human conscious minds are a complex system/component of the
average human being.
3.) Language is a complex system in its own right, and is also
a component of the human conscious mind.
4.) There is a relation between the human mind and language which
is also complex.
5.) Semantics are indispensable within the complex
system that is "language"-- as is Context (there is a crucial
relation there, between those two aspects).
6.) Semantics and context are also indispensable in the complex
relation between human minds and language.
7.) Computers are finite and are, therefore, incapable of fully
modeling any complex system.
The good news, on the other hand, is:
1.) This is intended to be an interactive tool and therefore its
finite incompleteness is not a fatal limitation: The human mind and human
relational ability will come along "for free" in any actual use of this
interactive tool. (In other words; it's meant to be part of a larger chimerical
system of human-and-computer-and-interactive-tool.)
2.) Reductional models of complex systems can be incredibly useful
and, in fact, organisms naturally incorporate the formation and functional use
of such reductions within themselves in the natural world (i.e.; Anticipatory
Systems) to great effect, all the time.
3.) It should be possible to figure out which aspects of the
complex systems being modeled can "safely" (safety being a relative term!) be
dispensed with and which cannot, such that the use of the models doesn't
generate intolerable "side effects".
4.) It should also be possible to list which potential side effects
would be intolerable (a term which I would tentatively define as meaning:
limited/limiting to a negative degree and unable to be compensated
for via the interactive human mind using the program) and which potential
side effects are clearly tolerable (easily compensated for).
What I can't answer, however, is whether the resulting information
will provide answers which can be translated into an information-sorting
protocol via computer programming language rules.
Judith
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