/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3667521]

Is all communication and language runnable code, /sci/?

Is what we consider "language" as distinct from program code merely a set of instructions for our brain to act, record, process, etc. certain elements of our memory?

[Anonymous No.3667537]

If the human brain's behavior is computable, then so is language and communication.

Do you think it is possible to create a physical simulation of the human brain that works?

[Anonymous No.3667538]

Yes, our brain is like a computer and will complete tasks if said to do something.

/thread

[Anonymous No.3667542]

Please shut up.

[Anonymous No.3667545]

>>3667542

+1

[Anonymous No.3667558]

>>3667542
>>3667545
Woah. What's with the hate, /sci/?

[Anonymous No.3667753]

A lot of language is really in our brain. More then most people realize, language is the result of us coming to conclusion about grammatical and syntactical rules that don't necessarily exist to everyone else. In a very minor way, everyone speaks their own language or "idiologue"

[Anonymous No.3667761]

>>3667753
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language

[Anonymous No.3667780]

>>3667761
That really doesn't relate to what I was talking about at all, as two English speakers, regardless of a few slightly different assumptions, can still understand each other well enough to communicate

[Krakengineer !!5XY+x7grkpt No.3667783]

>>3667521
Very few human communications are instructions that can be executed. Its mostly data. A resume is not a set of instructions, it doesn't matter if it is spoken aloud between humans or transfered digitally between computers.

[Anonymous No.3667821]

You make language too low-level. If anything, our minds are risc with many, many increasingly high level abstractions. Language and communication is pretty high.

[Anonymous No.3667872]

OP here again, the motivation for my questions was to try and ascertain the properties of language, any form of language, as may be used by humans, animals, plants, or any kind of discrete agents to communicate with each other, including computers, robots, and artificial intelligences.

As I was thinking, it occurred to me that if you think of a brain as a finite state automaton (hope I'm not confusing my terms too much here) then sound and sight and "output from Wernicke's area" are all just registers of the brain. The difference from traditional registers, such as a private field in object-oriented languages, is that the value is subject to change through the action of external effects, and not just the brain's "programming".

Indeed, parts of the brain such as Wernicke's area, in a sense, apply a filter to generalized sensors which sense the environment, and this filter extracts data pertaining to "language and communication"; this definition is thus ad-hoc in the sense that language ends up being "that which the brain's "language filter" filters out of the environment".

Structures of the brain then operate on this "value" that the "language filter" extracted from a given environmental input set, according to rules which have in turn been formed post-natally or possibly are even innate (as in the case of insects responding to pheromones in an instinctive manner, for instance).

Perhaps anything that communicates in any way, would obey these observations.

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but I'm used to thinking that programming languages are imperative, while human language can be both, for instance. Is there logical basis for a qualitative discrimination of this sort, or is this just a parameter of the syntax?

Are programming languages and human languages fundamentally different?

[Anonymous No.3667882]

>>3667780
It really does apply.

[Anonymous No.3668206]

Bumping

[Anonymous No.3668263]

>>3667783

I suspect even fewer human communications can be seen as multiple initialisations in a C for loop.

[Anonymous No.3668275]

>>3667872

>As I was thinking, it occurred to me that if you think of a brain as a finite state automaton

TIL that humans can't compute a^n b^n.

[Anonymous No.3668321]

>>3668275
>TIL
the fuck

this isn't an sms faggot

[Anonymous No.3668335]

OP why don't you do some research and answer this in a thesis?

[Anonymous No.3668345]

>Are programming languages and human languages fundamentally different?

Programming languages have a number of features that are pretty alien in human languages, such as a very high degree of nesting. (contrast http://specgram.com/CLI.2/03.bakery.disorder.html))

[Anonymous No.3668375]

>>3668345
Fortran? Really?
Really? FORTRAN? REALLY?
Do people still use Fortran?

[Anonymous No.3668396]

...did I say anything about Fortran there? But, yes, like I said in that other thread, there's LINPACK and a bunch of aging cold war guidance systems, bla bla bla.

[Anonymous No.3668418]

>>3668335
>writing a computational linguistics thesis
>for ms in biotechnology
>mfw

[Anonymous No.3668436]

>>3668418
What does computational linguistics have to do with biotech?

[Anonymous No.3668443]

>>3668436
Exactly.

[Anonymous No.3668926]

>>3668345
But that's just a matter of degree.

[Anonymous No.3668932]

>>3668926
Thats just like, your OPINION, MAN.

[Anonymous No.3668992]

Since each brain has it's own separate and unique language that it speaks with itself, language is actually quite complex. It takes our thoughts, which are unique and indecipherable to any other brain but our own, and shares those thoughts with another brain that is just as unique and indecipherable, which translates the language into thoughts and relates it to others. Holy shit.

[Anonymous No.3669030]

its a scripting language most of the time
except for mandates. like "do the dishes, then turn left on south street, and make me a sammich by putting piece of bread, then lettuce, then tomato, then meat, then slice of bread."

[Anonymous No.3669052]

>>3669030
What about talking to yourself then? What does singing mandate?

[Anonymous No.3669062]

>>3668992
Why would thought-language diverge from those around you when it's your environment that patterns the language?

[Anonymous No.3669066]

>>3668932
>the elusive Double Dude appears

[Anonymous No.3669132]

>>3669062

The way synapses and neurochemicals turn into thought is different from any other brain. Two brains couldn't communicate directly with each other without some sort of individualized thought-translator.

[Anonymous No.3669179]

There's also the semantic difference that sentences in natural languages usually express facts ("I have been to Sweden."), e.g, assert that things are true, whereas programming languages, at best, express how to do things. Try reading Brian Cantwell Smith's thesis for more on that, except don't, because it's several hundred pages of ugh

[Anonymous No.3669242]

You should read Snow Crash, OP.

[Anonymous No.3669417]

Machines can communicate in English easily. An error code is a machine communicating in English. The machine pulls a response out of its ass according to input given to it - like a human.

Human brains just have a vastly larger bank of responses to choose from, and the bank varies according to each person's experiences, attitudes, etc. Human brains also choose how they respond to an input in a vastly larger number of ways instead of a 1:1 correspondence that a modern computer would have.

>Computer
>I can't find this webpage! Print a 404 ERROR!

>Human
>I can't find this apple! Should I go look for it? Should I go buy a new one? Should I vocalize that I lost the apple? Should I vocalize that I lost "something"? Which of these takes the longest amount of time? Which is the most efficient? Which costs the most? Which costs the least? Where are my oranges? Etc

I hope this makes sense, I'm totally sleep deprived.

[Anonymous No.3669425]

>>3669132
Sounds like you're just waving a wand here. Don't you think your 'thought translator' is an arbitrary translation of your 'language translator' or any other type of 'translator' the brain uses to create communication?

Your distinctions are poor. Theres not been much proof that consciousness beneath the veil is uniquie.

It is more likely thought types converge, the same way personalities, archtypes and other stereotypes develop.

Sure theres no universal thought pattern, but theres no evidence that each individuals thoughts are any more different that each individual's language.