Language

Full Title or Meme

A Language allows expression of thought or gives commands for action.

Context

The original use of language is not fully known, but it was clearly and evolutionary adaptions. The most common theory is that language made humans better able to survive by organizing the hunt for food and encouraging the creation of stable social structures.

The original form of language was spoken and it dates back to the end of the Neolithic age, around 150,000 years ago. Written language began around 6,000 years ago, probably in Sumer.

Many of the dynamics the internet creates are, at this point, well understood: We know its capacity to help users find one another, making it easier than ever for people to get involved in conspiracy networks; we also know how social media platforms prioritize inflammatory content and that as a result, ideas and information that make people angry travel farther.

Problems

• People will always try to use their words to convince you to Trust them. Why do they do that? Because it works.
• Human language was created and is optimized for social interactions. It simple does not work well in highly structured situations where exact logical decision making is required. Philosopher that use natural language can never be precise in what they mean.

Examples

Natural language

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein taught us 70 years ago that words gain their meaning from how they are used. In other words, they do not have intrinsic meaning at all. Rather, they form a set of potential “moves” in a game he called a language game. That language game exists in order to facilitate human beings cooperating with one another to accomplish tasks.

Words in the dictionary, while appearing to have concrete definitions, are defined in terms of other words. We learn those words by observing human behavior and listening to them talk as they use them.

Words and how they fit together (grammar) do not, in fact, have to be logical or represent anything “real”. Instead, they are tools that help human beings work together.

Policy Language

The big question here is whether an unambiguous policy can be created that clearly expresses the intent of the administrator that a mechanistic authorization validation will be effective.

What has been suggested is that an AI could determine intent and apply it. The problem is that AIs are given instructions in a natural language so it is not clear that it is possible for the AI to do better than a human in rigorously applying policy.

Mathematics

Niels Bohr appreciated math as a language that allows us to talk about things that cannot be expressed in natural language. It allows us to think about things that are not accessible to natural language.

Metamathematics

(a term originated by Hilbert)