[ExI] Meaningless Symbols.

John Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Thu Jan 14 17:08:27 UTC 2010


On Jan 13, 2010, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> Forget about the CR. Neither of us care if parts of the system understand anything. We want to know if the system as a whole knows Chinese from manipulating Chinese symbols according to rules of syntax. It cannot, because syntax only tells the system 'what' to put 'where' and 'when'.

DNA used "formal rules of syntax" that you have such contempt for to tell just 20 different types of small Amino Acids to go to certain very specific positions until they had formed something called "Gordon Swobe". As for the semantics of it, that is in the eye of the beholder not intrinsic to it.

> The system looks at the forms of things, not at the meanings of things.

You keep making the exact same error over and over again; you look at something that is grand and complex and break it down into smaller and smaller parts until you find that the part you're looking at is not very grand or complex at all, and then you announce that this proves that there must be some secret mysterious key ingredient that is missing from the analysis. But that's just silly, analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance down into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it; if the part is still mysterious then it's still too big and you need to break it down some more. On and off is not mysterious at all so I claim victory, you think that very lack of puzzlement is a sign of failure.

 John K Clark
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