jerryfriedman hat am 19.04.2024 um 20:56 geschrieben:
> Silvano wrote:
>

>> * As a learner of English, I want to express the concept "less than
>> several, but more than just two or three". Let's say, between five and
>> ten. Better suggestions are highly welcome.
>
> "Several" is fine there, in my opinion.

Good to learn. I would have said "several" only for ten or more. I think
there was a discussion already about words for indefinite numbers, but I
forgot the results.

I mean:
few = x-y
several = z-xx
many = yy-zz
a lot of =
etc.
What are your (approximate) numbers in place of x/y/z/xx/yy/zz?

>> I also thank Jerry for his "That should be "What else do you call it?".
>> But then I have to ask: why is "what else" correct and "how else" wrong
>> in questions like my "... else do you call it?" Just a matter of usage,
>> which I have to learn, or is there an explanation I can understand?
>
> It seems straightforward to me. You expect the answer to be a noun--
> "I call it a backwards apostrophe"--so the question starts with "What".
> What I find strange, but not hard to learn, is the use of words
> corresponding to "How" in French and Spanish and, Google thinks,
> Italian.

An Italian confirms what Google thinks.

> "How do you call" for "What do you call" is a very common error by
> non-native English speakers.

Probably because we think, e.g. about "`": "(If you don't call it grave
accent), which other way do you call it?"

Le 20/04/2024 à 08:45, Silvano a écrit :
> jerryfriedman hat am 19.04.2024 um 20:56 geschrieben:
>> Silvano wrote:
>>>
>>> * As a learner of English, I want to express the concept "less than
>>> several, but more than just two or three". Let's say, between five and
>>> ten. Better suggestions are highly welcome.
>>
>> "Several" is fine there, in my opinion.
>
> Good to learn. I would have said "several" only for ten or more. I think
> there was a discussion already about words for indefinite numbers, but I
> forgot the results.
>
> I mean:
> few = x-y
> several = z-xx
> many = yy-zz
> a lot of =
> etc.
> What are your (approximate) numbers in place of x/y/z/xx/yy/zz?

I think it depends on context. The few and the many in a country could
be thousands and millions; in a village, a few could be the same as
several, which is to say a handful.

The Few in the Battle of Britain numbered about 3,000 (source: IWM); the
Many were about 46,000,000 British (ONS), and a lot more if WC meant the
Empire or the free world.

Quite /a lot of/ people know that.

So I don't think one can give specific number ranges. It's relative.

occam wrote:

>>>>        if x<10:
>>>>            print(date)
>>>>        else:
>>>>            print('No go!')
>>>>
>>>> versus:
>>>>
>>>>        if x<10:
>>>>            print(date)
>>>>        print('No go!')
>>>>
>>>> Those programs are not identical.
>>>>
>>>
>>> ..and you are a terrible programmer. You don't know when to HALT your
>>> program.
>>
>> Since we do not see what comes after "print('No go!')", we don't know if
>> the programmer wants the program to halt or not.
>>
>
> Its a simple example. I assume it is intended to print <whatever>, THEN
> stop (or jump to the next part of the program).

Python - and many other programming languages - stop the process when
there are no more statements. I thought that that would be evident. I
had no intention of writing a complete script. I thought that that would
be evident too.

--
Bertel
Kolt, Denmark

On 20/04/2024 at 08:45, Silvano wrote:
> jerryfriedman hat am 19.04.2024 um 20:56 geschrieben:
>> Silvano wrote:
>>
>
>>> * As a learner of English, I want to express the concept "less than
>>> several, but more than just two or three". Let's say, between five and
>>> ten. Better suggestions are highly welcome.
>>
>> "Several" is fine there, in my opinion.
>
> Good to learn. I would have said "several" only for ten or more. I think
> there was a discussion already about words for indefinite numbers, but I
> forgot the results.
>
> I mean:
> few = x-y
> several = z-xx
> many = yy-zz
> a lot of =
> etc.
> What are your (approximate) numbers in place of x/y/z/xx/yy/zz?
>

Try "I'll be away for a couple of days" - literally two, but could be three.
Add "or so" - at least two, possibly more.

You can't quantify exactly any of the above.

A "small village" in the UK is probably one with a few 10s to a few
hundred of residents. In, for e.g. India, a small village may have
thousands of residents.

--
Chris Elvidge, England
NON-FLAMMABLE, IS NOT A CHALLENGE

On 20/04/2024 06:26, Rich Ulrich wrote:
> Now I start thinking of natural, human intelligence. Are we
> reviewing our own lookup tables?

All the time. I'm doing it *now*, drinking my cup of coffee. "Never
Robusta grains again" is my new entry.

On 20-Apr-24 2:38, Sn!pe wrote:
> Bertel Lund Hansen <gadekryds@lundhansen.dk> wrote:
>
>> Sam Plusnet wrote:
>>
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOrhjgt-_Qc
>>>
>>> I'm sure there are lots of technical reasons why that's rock & roll, but
>>> I still hear it as (gospel) blues.
>>>
>>
>> This is more clearly rock&roll, but it's later (1964):
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9a49oFalZE
>>
>
> Bill Haley & his Comets (founded 1952) - 'Rock Around The Clock' 1955:-
>
> <https://youtu.be/ZgdufzXvjqw>
>
But there has long been a move to identify some earlier point in time
where Rock & Roll _really_ started.

(That Monteverdi fella came up with some interesting tunes.)

--
Sam Plusnet

Silvano wrote:

> jerryfriedman hat am 19.04.2024 um 20:56 geschrieben:
>> Silvano wrote:
>>

>>> * As a learner of English, I want to express the concept "less than
>>> several, but more than just two or three". Let's say, between five and
>>> ten. Better suggestions are highly welcome.
>>
>> "Several" is fine there, in my opinion.

> Good to learn. I would have said "several" only for ten or more. I think
> there was a discussion already about words for indefinite numbers, but I
> forgot the results.

> I mean:
> few = x-y
> several = z-xx
> many = yy-zz
> a lot of =
> etc.
> What are your (approximate) numbers in place of x/y/z/xx/yy/zz?

As Hibou suggested, it's not that simple. For me, unlike the others,
"several" isn't relative, or not very. And ten seems like the upper
limit for "several", or close to it, but it might depend on context.

>>> I also thank Jerry for his "That should be "What else do you call it?".
>>> But then I have to ask: why is "what else" correct and "how else" wrong
>>> in questions like my "... else do you call it?" Just a matter of usage,
>>> which I have to learn, or is there an explanation I can understand?
>>
>> It seems straightforward to me. You expect the answer to be a noun--
>> "I call it a backwards apostrophe"--so the question starts with "What".
>> What I find strange, but not hard to learn, is the use of words
>> corresponding to "How" in French and Spanish and, Google thinks,
>> Italian.

> An Italian confirms what Google thinks.

Thanks.

>> "How do you call" for "What do you call" is a very common error by
>> non-native English speakers.

> Probably because we think, e.g. about "`": "(If you don't call it grave
> accent), which other way do you call it?"

Exactly. For us, it's a thing or a name, not a way. "That's a good
thing to call it."

--
Jerry Friedman

occam used thar keyboard to writen:
> On 19/04/2024 06:02, bertietaylor wrote:
>
>>> Rich Ulrich's details missing
>
>>> OBaue: What should we call examples of AI when the
>>> achievements are too tiny to for the intelligence to baffle us?
>>
>
> <Arindam bullshit deleted>
>
> Learn how to reply to message correctly you ignorant chubhan. Leave the
> OP references so as everyone knows who you are replying to.

I'm not sure that "lookup table" is a good model of the either the HI
or AI storage. It seems to be more like an unstructured data net with
associative links, implemented on top of neuronal connections (or the
emulation thereof), and has a tendency to be diffuse in the medium
rather than using colocation of storage units. And yes, the weights
associated with connection strength is updated dynamically (and
sometimes requires refresh).

/dps

--
"I'm glad unicorns don't ever need upgrades."
"We are as up as it is possible to get graded!"
_Phoebe and Her Unicorn_, 2016.05.15

There was a thread on comp.lang.lisp earlier this month on the origins
of the if expression and Jon McCarthy's role. There was some false
information presented, inclding about what happens in various of algol,
(only partially corrected further down)
but I'm copying one message from Kaz which covers it from JMC's pov.

,---- <20240403211041.911@kylheku.com>
| | On 2024-04-02, Alan Bawden <alan@csail.mit.edu> wrote:
| > Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> writes:
| >
| > ... The code is from just before MacCarthy invented the ternary IF,
| > as a shorthand for a one clause cond: ...
| >
| > I don't think that McCarthy invented IF as an abbreviation for COND, but
| > I could be wrong.
| | OK, I found the smoking gun. Why, it's under our noses: Maccarthy's
| February 1979 "History of Lisp" paper.
| | http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf
| | (Don't try HTTPS, it doesn't resolve to the PDF. There may be other
| hostings of it.)
| | Quote:
| | I invented conditional expressions in connection with a set of chess
| legal move routines I wrote in FORTRAN for the IBM 704 at M.I.T.
| during 1957-58. This program did not use list processing. The IF
| statement provided in FORTRAN 1 and FORTRAN 2 was very awkward to use,
| and it was natural to invent a function XIF(M,N1,N2) whose value was
| N1 or N2 according to whether the expression M was zero or not. The
| function shortened many programs and made them easier to understand,
| but it had to be used sparingly, because all three arguments had to be
| evaluated before XIF was entered, since XIF was called as an ordinary
| FORTRAN function though written in machine language. This led to the
| invention of the true conditional expression which evaluates only one
| of N1 and N2 according to whether M is true or false and to a desire
| for a programming language that would allow its use.
| | A paper defining conditional expressions and proposing their use in
| Algol was sent to the Communications of the ACM but was arbitrarily
| demoted to a letter to the editor, because it was very short.
| | There you go; no hallucination or urban legends. Now, this does not
| establish that MacCarthy ever worked with (if A B C) in Lisp. But
| that is just a variation on the same idea; a footnote, if you will.
| | MacCarthy used XIF(A, B, C), in his own words, to shorten many programs,
| and make them easier to understand, in his own words. (In Lisp, we
| can use IF to shorten programs that use COND!)
| | The part about the "desire for a programming language that would allow
| its use" is also important; his inclusion of a conditional in Lisp can
| be traced to these thoughts, which have their origin in working with
| a three-argument form, and desire to have it with the right evaluation
| semantics.
| | As for Fortran, it eventually caved in and got a conditional operator.
| In the year 2021!!! https://j3-fortran.org/doc/year/21/21-157r2.txt
`----

On 2024-04-20 00:49, occam wrote:
> On 19/04/2024 23:24, lar3ryca wrote:
>> On 2024-04-19 13:39, occam wrote:
>>> On 19/04/2024 16:50, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>>>> occam wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If the statement is not true, the 'else' is implicit. You continue down
>>>>> the  list of instructions.
>>>>
>>>> I have thought a bit about this statement because I don't understand it.
>>>>
>>>>        if x<10:
>>>>            print(date)
>>>>        else:
>>>>            print('No go!')
>>>>
>>>> versus:
>>>>
>>>>        if x<10:
>>>>            print(date)
>>>>        print('No go!')
>>>>
>>>> Those programs are not identical.
>>>>
>>>
>>> ..and you are a terrible programmer. You don't know when to HALT your
>>> program.
>>
>> Since we do not see what comes after "print('No go!')", we don't know if
>> the programmer wants the program to halt or not.
>>
>
> Its a simple example. I assume it is intended to print <whatever>, THEN
> stop (or jump to the next part of the program).

Yes, it is a simple example, and the 'example' is the crux of the
matter. In the example, the program will either print the date or 'No
Go', but the next statement could be anything, exit, halt, print
something else, jump somewhere, or perform some math. In a language
without an 'else' one could implement the functionality with something like.

if x<10
print date
if x>20
print 'oops'
<carry on with the program>

I don't see any indication of bad programming, or any reason to assume
that the programmer doesn't know how to halt the program.

--
If swimming is so good for your figure, how do you explain whales?

On 21/04/2024 07:29, lar3ryca wrote:
> On 2024-04-20 00:49, occam wrote:
>> On 19/04/2024 23:24, lar3ryca wrote:
>>> On 2024-04-19 13:39, occam wrote:
>>>> On 19/04/2024 16:50, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>>>>> occam wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> If the statement is not true, the 'else' is implicit. You continue
>>>>>> down
>>>>>> the  list of instructions.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have thought a bit about this statement because I don't
>>>>> understand it.
>>>>>
>>>>>         if x<10:
>>>>>             print(date)
>>>>>         else:
>>>>>             print('No go!')
>>>>>
>>>>> versus:
>>>>>
>>>>>         if x<10:
>>>>>             print(date)
>>>>>         print('No go!')
>>>>>
>>>>> Those programs are not identical.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ..and you are a terrible programmer. You don't know when to HALT your
>>>> program.
>>>
>>> Since we do not see what comes after "print('No go!')", we don't know if
>>> the programmer wants the program to halt or not.
>>>
>>
>> Its a simple example. I assume it is intended to print <whatever>, THEN
>> stop (or jump to the next part of the program).
>
> Yes, it is a simple example, and the 'example' is the crux of the
> matter. In the example, the program will either print the date or 'No
> Go', but the next statement could be anything, exit, halt, print
> something else, jump somewhere, or perform some math. In a language
> without an 'else' one could implement the functionality with something
> like.
>
> if x<10
>   print date
> if x>20
>   print 'oops'
> <carry on with the program>
>
> I don't see any indication of bad programming, or any reason to assume
> that the programmer doesn't know how to halt the program.
>

When a program *always* prints 'No go!' - irrespective of the value of x
- then it is badly written. No excuses.

occam wrote:

> When a program *always* prints 'No go!' - irrespective of the value of x
> - then it is badly written. No excuses.

My criterion for a well-written program is one that does precisely what
the programmer intended with no superfluous or confused code. Therefore
I give my two programs the highest possible score.

--
Bertel
Kolt, Denmark

On 2024-04-20 22:54:04 +0000, jerryfriedman said:

> Silvano wrote:
>
>> jerryfriedman hat am 19.04.2024 um 20:56 geschrieben:
>>> Silvano wrote:
>>>
>
>>>> * As a learner of English, I want to express the concept "less than
>>>> several, but more than just two or three". Let's say, between five and
>>>> ten. Better suggestions are highly welcome.
>>>
>>> "Several" is fine there, in my opinion.
>
>> Good to learn. I would have said "several" only for ten or more. I think
>> there was a discussion already about words for indefinite numbers, but I
>> forgot the results.
>
>> I mean:
>> few = x-y
>> several = z-xx
>> many = yy-zz
>> a lot of =
>> etc.
>> What are your (approximate) numbers in place of x/y/z/xx/yy/zz?
>
> As Hibou suggested, it's not that simple. For me, unlike the others,
> "several" isn't relative, or not very. And ten seems like the upper
> limit for "several", or close to it, but it might depend on context.

From an early age I have tended to think of "several" as meaning "about
seven", doubtless because of the similarity in sound.
>
>>>> I also thank Jerry for his "That should be "What else do you call it?".
>>>> But then I have to ask: why is "what else" correct and "how else" wrong
>>>> in questions like my "... else do you call it?" Just a matter of usage,
>>>> which I have to learn, or is there an explanation I can understand?
>>>
>>> It seems straightforward to me. You expect the answer to be a noun--
>>> "I call it a backwards apostrophe"--so the question starts with "What".
>>> What I find strange, but not hard to learn, is the use of words
>>> corresponding to "How" in French and Spanish and, Google thinks,
>>> Italian.
>
>> An Italian confirms what Google thinks.
>
> Thanks.
>
>>> "How do you call" for "What do you call" is a very common error by
>>> non-native English speakers.
>
>> Probably because we think, e.g. about "`": "(If you don't call it grave
>> accent), which other way do you call it?"
>
> Exactly. For us, it's a thing or a name, not a way. "That's a good
> thing to call it."

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

Hibou submitted this idea :
> Le 20/04/2024 à 08:45, Silvano a écrit :
>> jerryfriedman hat am 19.04.2024 um 20:56 geschrieben:
>>> Silvano wrote:
>>>>
>>>> * As a learner of English, I want to express the concept "less than
>>>> several, but more than just two or three". Let's say, between five and
>>>> ten. Better suggestions are highly welcome.
>>>
>>> "Several" is fine there, in my opinion.
>>
>> Good to learn. I would have said "several" only for ten or more. I think
>> there was a discussion already about words for indefinite numbers, but I
>> forgot the results.
>>
>> I mean:
>> few = x-y
>> several = z-xx
>> many = yy-zz
>> a lot of =
>> etc.
>> What are your (approximate) numbers in place of x/y/z/xx/yy/zz?
>
> I think it depends on context. The few and the many in a country could be
> thousands and millions; in a village, a few could be the same as several,
> which is to say a handful.
>
> The Few in the Battle of Britain numbered about 3,000 (source: IWM); the Many
> were about 46,000,000 British (ONS), and a lot more if WC meant the Empire or
> the free world.
>
> Quite /a lot of/ people know that.
>
> So I don't think one can give specific number ranges. It's relative.

I agree with this. Glad I read a head.

/dps

--
Maybe C282Y is simply one of the hangers-on, a groupie following a
future guitar god of the human genome: an allele with undiscovered
virtuosity, currently soloing in obscurity in Mom's garage.
Bradley Wertheim, theAtlantic.com, Jan 10 2013

Remember when lar3ryca bragged outrageously? That was Friday:
> On 2024-04-19 06:56, Hibou wrote:
>> Le 18/04/2024 à 06:47, Rich Ulrich a écrit :
>>>
>>> OBaue: What should we call examples of AI when the
>>> achievements are too tiny to for the intelligence to baffle us?
>>
>> AM, artificial mediocrity, perhaps.
>>
>> I think bafflement may come at different points. We understand what a
>> self-driving car is doing when it stays in lane or stops at lights, while
>> likely being unable to understand how it does it.
>>
>> Then, at a higher level, if AI managed to stabilise all the world's
>> economies or prevent disputes escalating into war, everything it does might
>> be beyond our comprehension.
>>
>> Perhaps self-taught AI marks the divide, the point at which humans can no
>> longer unravel its inner workings.
>
> Instead of specifying only 'self-taught, I would include human-taught, with
> the caveat that human-taught leaves the way open to abuse or stupidity.
>
> I have two apps on my phone that I use fairly often. One is called 'LeafSnap'
> and one is called 'BirdNet'.
>
> LeafSnap analyzes images, allowing me to specify foliage, flowers,
> bark. It is pretty good, but it asks for feedback to tell it if it's right or
> not.

PlantNet offers similar options, and has a confirm button by each of
it's guesses. I'm not often able to offer confirmation.

> BirdNet analyzes bird songs, with a similar feedback mechanism, which I have
> used a few times when I knew the analysis was incorrect.

I have BirdNet as well. I'm bad enough on bird identification that I
wouldn't know the analysis was incorrect. And grackles and mocking
birds would seem hard to identify by song. The latter has been
identified as the source of car alarm sounds and sirens. And all this
with vocal cords; I have to whistle to imitate them.

/dps

--
"Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself
is a good thing to do, You may be a fool but you're the fool in
charge." -- Carl Reiner

On Sun, 21 Apr 2024 03:24:07 -0700
Snidely <snidely.too@gmail.com> wrote:

[]
>
> > BirdNet analyzes bird songs, with a similar feedback mechanism, which I have
> > used a few times when I knew the analysis was incorrect.
>
> I have BirdNet as well. I'm bad enough on bird identification that I
> wouldn't know the analysis was incorrect. And grackles and mocking
> birds would seem hard to identify by song. The latter has been
> identified as the source of car alarm sounds and sirens. And all this
> with vocal cords; I have to whistle to imitate them.
>

See Also ^w^w Listen Also the Amazing Lyre Bird (f. Sir David Attenborough)
--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

On 21/04/2024 09:45, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> occam wrote:
>
>> When a program *always* prints 'No go!' - irrespective of the value of x
>> - then it is badly written. No excuses.
>
> My criterion for a well-written program is one that does precisely what
> the programmer intended with no superfluous or confused code. Therefore
> I give my two programs the highest possible score.
>

In Denmark.

On 21/04/24 17:45, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> occam wrote:
>
>> When a program *always* prints 'No go!' - irrespective of the value of x
>> - then it is badly written. No excuses.
>
> My criterion for a well-written program is one that does precisely what
> the programmer intended with no superfluous or confused code. Therefore
> I give my two programs the highest possible score.

By now we've lost track of which two programs we are talking about. You
wrote:

> if x<10:
> print(date)
> else:
> print('No go!')
>
> versus:
>
> if x<10:
> print(date)
> print('No go!')
>
> Those programs are not identical.

So far, so good. We can agree that they're not identical, and that
program 1 is well written, in that it does what the programmer intended,
and what everyone else expected it to do.

Program 2 is a different matter. I submit that there is a high
probability that it does NOT do what the programmer intended, because
the programmer was confused. A high proportion of program errors happen
because the programmer intended one thing, but actually implemented
something different.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

Peter Moylan noted that:
> On 21/04/24 17:45, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>> occam wrote:
>>
>>> When a program *always* prints 'No go!' - irrespective of the value of x
>>> - then it is badly written. No excuses.
>>
>> My criterion for a well-written program is one that does precisely what
>> the programmer intended with no superfluous or confused code. Therefore
>> I give my two programs the highest possible score.
>
> By now we've lost track of which two programs we are talking about. You
> wrote:
>
>> if x<10:
>> print(date)
>> else:
>> print('No go!')
>>
>> versus:
>>
>> if x<10:
>> print(date)
>> print('No go!')
>>
>> Those programs are not identical.
>
> So far, so good. We can agree that they're not identical, and that
> program 1 is well written, in that it does what the programmer intended,
> and what everyone else expected it to do.
>
> Program 2 is a different matter. I submit that there is a high
> probability that it does NOT do what the programmer intended, because
> the programmer was confused.

Why do you give it a high probability? Why would you say the
programmer is confused without knowing what the rest of the program
looked like? Is it because of the text string "No go!"? What if the
text string was "One, two, three, O'Leary"?

> A high proportion of program errors happen
> because the programmer intended one thing, but actually implemented
> something different.

/dps "I like elses, but they don't go everywhere"

--
There's nothing inherently wrong with Big Data. What matters, as it
does for Arnold Lund in California or Richard Rothman in Baltimore, are
the questions -- old and new, good and bad -- this newest tool lets us
ask. (R. Lerhman, CSMonitor.com)

Peter Moylan wrote:

> So far, so good. We can agree that they're not identical, and that
> program 1 is well written, in that it does what the programmer intended,
> and what everyone else expected it to do.

> Program 2 is a different matter. I submit that there is a high
> probability that it does NOT do what the programmer intended, because
> the programmer was confused. A high proportion of program errors happen
> because the programmer intended one thing, but actually implemented
> something different.

The programmer is me. The 'programs' are not quoted from anything. They
are two examples I wrote to show why I didn't understand occam's
statement - because I didn't know that there was only one action
possible after "if" in Fortran.

--
Bertel
Kolt, Denmark

Bertel Lund Hansen <gadekryds@lundhansen.dk> writes:
> Rich Ulrich wrote:
>> Wouldn't it be nice if AI would fill in my credit card number
>> for me when I order something? along with my address, etc.?
>> Yeah, Amazon knows that because it reads my cookies and
>> knows who I am. We don't call it AI.
>
> I certainly don't. There's no I involved, just a mere computer look-up
> in a table. The same goes for your other examples.
>
> A pocket calculater telling me that 5*6=30 has no AI either.

But only an AI can tell you that 60*60*600 = 216,000.

At least that's what one told me last week.

Phil
--
We are no longer hunters and nomads. No longer awed and frightened, as we have
gained some understanding of the world in which we live. As such, we can cast
aside childish remnants from the dawn of our civilization.
-- NotSanguine on SoylentNews, after Eugen Weber in /The Western Tradition/

On 2024-04-21 01:38, occam wrote:
> On 21/04/2024 07:29, lar3ryca wrote:
>> On 2024-04-20 00:49, occam wrote:
>>> On 19/04/2024 23:24, lar3ryca wrote:
>>>> On 2024-04-19 13:39, occam wrote:
>>>>> On 19/04/2024 16:50, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>>>>>> occam wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If the statement is not true, the 'else' is implicit. You continue
>>>>>>> down
>>>>>>> the  list of instructions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have thought a bit about this statement because I don't
>>>>>> understand it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>         if x<10:
>>>>>>             print(date)
>>>>>>         else:
>>>>>>             print('No go!')
>>>>>>
>>>>>> versus:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>         if x<10:
>>>>>>             print(date)
>>>>>>         print('No go!')
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Those programs are not identical.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ..and you are a terrible programmer. You don't know when to HALT your
>>>>> program.
>>>>
>>>> Since we do not see what comes after "print('No go!')", we don't know if
>>>> the programmer wants the program to halt or not.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Its a simple example. I assume it is intended to print <whatever>, THEN
>>> stop (or jump to the next part of the program).
>>
>> Yes, it is a simple example, and the 'example' is the crux of the
>> matter. In the example, the program will either print the date or 'No
>> Go', but the next statement could be anything, exit, halt, print
>> something else, jump somewhere, or perform some math. In a language
>> without an 'else' one could implement the functionality with something
>> like.
>>
>> if x<10
>>   print date
>> if x>20
>>   print 'oops'
>> <carry on with the program>
>>
>> I don't see any indication of bad programming, or any reason to assume
>> that the programmer doesn't know how to halt the program.
>>
>
> When a program *always* prints 'No go!' - irrespective of the value of x
> - then it is badly written. No excuses.

True. I will agree that as an example, it was not well thought out.

--
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

Madhu wrote:

> There was a thread on comp.lang.lisp earlier this month on the origins
> of the if expression and Jon McCarthy's role. There was some false
> information presented, inclding about what happens in various of algol,
> (only partially corrected further down)
> but I'm copying one message from Kaz which covers it from JMC's pov.

> ,---- <20240403211041.911@kylheku.com>
> |
> | On 2024-04-02, Alan Bawden <alan@csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> | > Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> writes:
> | >
> | > ... The code is from just before MacCarthy invented the ternary IF,
> | > as a shorthand for a one clause cond: ...
> | >
> | > I don't think that McCarthy invented IF as an abbreviation for COND, but
> | > I could be wrong.
> |
> | OK, I found the smoking gun. Why, it's under our noses: Maccarthy's
> | February 1979 "History of Lisp" paper.
> |
> | http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf
> |
> | (Don't try HTTPS, it doesn't resolve to the PDF. There may be other
> | hostings of it.)
> |
> | Quote:
> |
> | I invented conditional expressions in connection with a set of chess
> | legal move routines I wrote in FORTRAN for the IBM 704 at M.I.T.
> | during 1957-58. This program did not use list processing. The IF
> | statement provided in FORTRAN 1 and FORTRAN 2 was very awkward to use,
> | and it was natural to invent a function XIF(M,N1,N2) whose value was
> | N1 or N2 according to whether the expression M was zero or not. The
> | function shortened many programs and made them easier to understand,
> | but it had to be used sparingly, because all three arguments had to be
> | evaluated before XIF was entered, since XIF was called as an ordinary
> | FORTRAN function though written in machine language. This led to the
> | invention of the true conditional expression which evaluates only one
> | of N1 and N2 according to whether M is true or false and to a desire
> | for a programming language that would allow its use.
> |
> | A paper defining conditional expressions and proposing their use in
> | Algol was sent to the Communications of the ACM but was arbitrarily
> | demoted to a letter to the editor, because it was very short.
> |
> | There you go; no hallucination or urban legends. Now, this does not
> | establish that MacCarthy ever worked with (if A B C) in Lisp. But
> | that is just a variation on the same idea; a footnote, if you will.
> |
> | MacCarthy used XIF(A, B, C), in his own words, to shorten many programs,
> | and make them easier to understand, in his own words. (In Lisp, we
> | can use IF to shorten programs that use COND!)
> |
> | The part about the "desire for a programming language that would allow
> | its use" is also important; his inclusion of a conditional in Lisp can
> | be traced to these thoughts, which have their origin in working with
> | a three-argument form, and desire to have it with the right evaluation
> | semantics.
> |
> | As for Fortran, it eventually caved in and got a conditional operator.
> | In the year 2021!!! https://j3-fortran.org/doc/year/21/21-157r2.txt
> `----
Nice to hear about McCarthy, one of the very few computer greats who would post in Usenet.
He sent me an email in the late 90s.
As I remember, that was about some difference in opinion about what is AI.
My stand was that there is no such thing as AI, for a computer by definition had to be an idiot, would be of no use if it wasn't; but a computer could be used with HI to find new things. By itself it could not.
So what I was doing was extensive simulation providing huge data outputs that with proper effort could be realistic, then doing what is now called "data mining" to find the treasures there, like some new pattern or some set of variables to optimise a situation.
Well, must say that my approach is totally out, as it was necessarily painstaking - one had to start from scratch - so not worth it. Much simple to buy a general "analytic" software package and put in values. If nothing happens, or something wrong happens, blame the package.
And AI, or at least so-called AI, is in, and how.

Snidely wrote:

> I'm not sure that "lookup table" is a good model of the either the HI
> or AI storage. It seems to be more like an unstructured data net with
> associative links, implemented on top of neuronal connections (or the
> emulation thereof), and has a tendency to be diffuse in the medium
> rather than using colocation of storage units. And yes, the weights
> associated with connection strength is updated dynamically (and
> sometimes requires refresh).

All that smacks of Arindam's 1987 paper "A New Method for Partial-Match Retrievals" which changed the course of history.

bt

> /dps

On 20/04/2024 00:36, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 20/04/24 00:47, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>> Hibou wrote:
>>
>>> Perhaps self-taught AI marks the divide, the point at which humans
>>> can no longer unravel its inner workings.
>>
>> Isn't that the case with the Go program that beat the world champion?
>> I read that the decisive move was one that a human never would have
>> thought of.
>
> The example that sticks in my mind was a program designed to prove
> theorems in mathematics. It proved that the base angles in an isosceles
> triangle are equal because ABC is congruent to ACB. That's a proof that
> probably would not have occurred to humans.
>

I doubt however that the geometry program in this case learned the rules
of geometry from naught. The case Bertel is referring to is the AI
program AlphaGO (by Deepmind). In this case the program learned to play
'Go' by itself, by playing games against itself. By tallying up scores
and eliminating non-optimal moves, it was very much an exercise in
self-learning.

And for those who did not follow the AlphaGo story to its bitter end...
humans beware:

<https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/27/20985260/ai-go-alphago-lee-se-dol-retired-deepmind-defeat>

This could be the fate of most human activities which are
accessible/amenable to AI. Humans will be retired, one way or another.