[ExI] fermi question alive and well

[John Clark]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 9:17 PM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> *But of what are those people examples? You must have some definition in
> mind to choose those people.*


No, I have examples of people who can do things with their mind similar to
stuff Albert Einstein could  do with his, Alan Turing would meet that
criteria for intelligence.


> *> The definition comes first,*
>

Where do you think lexicographers get the knowledge to write their
dictionary? From examples of language use of course. All definition are
made of words in a dictionary, and those words also have definitions that
are in the same dictionary, and round and round it goes. The only thing
that can break us out of that infinite loop and give real meaning to
language is is examples; I point to a tall thing with green stuff at the
top and say "tree" and you get the idea. Without examples language is just
noises made by the mouth or a sequence of ASCII symbols on a page that
corresponds with other ASCII symbols on another page, one squiggle would
mean another squiggle and that's all it would mean.


> > *then the deduction to the example.*
>

Most people have not looked at a dictionary in 40 years since their fourth
grade teacher made them, and yet they get along just fine.

 John K Clark
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