Can you describe the ACUMANSCRIPT? Is it similar to Prolog or Lisp? Fuzzy string match is this something like Soundex/Double Metaphone? Do you use a knowledge base or ontology (Freebase, Wikidata, etc.)? What programming language is it written (beside your script lang), Node.js/Go/Python/C++ ?
The syntax of the ACUMANSCRIPT markup language is actually more similar to XML (or, in the AI field, AIML) due to its rigid structure. It's fundamentally based on pattern matching akin to regex. However, the backend processing which alters ACUMANSCRIPT and processes the individual data is what makes it unique.
The knowledge base used for the Named-entity recognition for the processing of ACUMANSCRIPT is Wikimedia and WolframAlpha, used in conjunction.
Hey, I've done a little writeup on why it doesn't work properly under Firefox (and some other little issues I ran into), and the fixes so that it should work all fine.
Thank you for the code you offered, and I will implement it right away. There are so many different things to debug, I kept post-posting this one. I like how you binded the events instead of calling them inline. It's also a much better coding practice.
Whenever I find one of these AI chat programs, I like to start by typing in "this sentence is false", and yours gave me the most unique response (after quite some time calculating): "It seems to be, and it's actually a string of words satisfying the grammatical rules of a language."
On a side note - I work in tech education, and I have to say that the software projects that motivated people of your age are creating is astonishing. Keep it up!
Pedantic, but unlike pregant you can qualify unique.
Unlike pregnant which is a binary (are/are not), unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium.
Even the dictionary, in one of the terms for unique, gives a meaning that's not "unique" in a binary way at all:
"not typical; unusual".
If it wasn't a continuum we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique" used above (like we don't have for pregnancy). And they are not mere errors (like using your instead of you're etc.), they are used to express this notion, that something can be "different" than all other things in different deegres.
> we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique"
I wouldn't normally bring this up, but while we're being pedantic, there are lots of reasonably common expressions that exhibit gratingly poor grammar or sematics. You have quoted two of them above.
> unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium.
Ah no. Unique means "one of a kind", not merely "differing". "uni" as a prefix means one, e.g unicycle, universe, unitard. "one of a kind"-ness is not continuous! As per the second link, "unique" already contains the idea of "very different".
If we are talking about descriptive linguistics "analyzing and describing how language is actually used" as opposed to formal rules ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description ), then we must also love how the way that I use the English language differs from the way that you use it. And how my well-documented variant works too, and why they differ.
I don't use "unique" that way. Do you want "unique" to be just a redundant synonym for "different" or not?
It's not quite a synonym for "different", though. If you say "that's a very different project", there has to be some context for what it's different from; it can't stand alone, except in some colloquialisms. On the other hand, if you say "that's a highly unique project", it's understood that it's very different from 'most of the (actual) other projects'... and aside from being verbose, that formulation is only an approximation to the meaning of "unique". For one thing, "unique" suggests a holistic comparison among the whole class, while something like "different from most" suggests a series of two-way comparisons (is it different from A? is it different from B?), each of which can only be yes or no, and "most just counts how many of the results are yeses. This is not necessarily what is intended, since the meaning can be corrupted into 'different from [the general characteristics of a group containing most of the others]', but I'd call that more abusive than just grading "unique". And even that changes the meaning of the grade: if something is 'extremely different from most of the others', then it can still be identical to a decent chunk of the others; the adverb only applies within the aforementioned comparison(s) (even if to a group). If something is extremely unique, then it's probably different from almost all of the others, but chances are it's also very different from most of them; the adverb applies to the holistic comparison.
I wasn't talking about "pregnant" and I personally don't care about it. "Unique" literally means "there is only one". Now where would you insert the word "most" in the sentence "there is only one"?
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
When someone quotes a great author, they are often not standing on a single sentence, but on the larger meaning of some story signified by that sentence. Star Trek's Tamarians whole language was references to stories -- "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" is, for them, a highly compressed statement. So literature enormously expands our vocabulary, allowing us to use quotes as "pointers" to ideas much larger than anything we could state briefly.
"[Humpty said:] As I was saying, that seems to be done right — though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now — and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents —'
'Certainly,' said Alice.
'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected."
I think it is clear that Humpty's meaning was quite obvious, and Alice's complaint a bit dense. But while Humpty insists that he must tell Alice what he means, we can see that he needn't.
Of course, this word commanding business is as dangerous as you note, and Lewis Carroll is on the case:
"Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
'Would you tell me please,' said Alice, 'what that means?'
'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.'"
On the one hand, words can have many meanings, and any particular meaning must in part be taken from context. On the other hand, if we just try to _impose_ a meaning on a word, we defeat all communication, and make ourselves ridiculous to boot.
> When someone quotes a great author [it is for] the larger meaning of some story signified by that sentence.
That doesn't work when people are exchanging ideas on a forum and not everyone has read the same body of work. Because of the difficulty inherent in estimating who has read what, it is usually smart to avoid arguments "from the arts".
> allowing us to use quotes as "pointers" to ideas much larger than anything we could state briefly.
Larger than you could state briefly. Plus, aphorisms exist to fill in the gap you're talking about - all the benefits of brevity without the need for previous literary knowledge.
The excerpt you quoted reads like a boring story about a character that suffers from an affectation that makes him (her?) obsessed with trying to find reasons for using words loosely. I also didn't understand what he/she meant by "there's glory for you" even after the supposed explanation of what "glory" means in Dumpty's head.
This argument that "Shakespeare wrote this therefore it's right" doesn't work.
Read How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin for several instances of where Shakespeare made English mistakes and how to actually write correct English without appeal to authority.
That argument works, though, if we were speaking a language with a regulating body, such as French or Portuguese. Those regulating bodies define their languages in such a way that the "famous writers" never make mistakes. That's not the case with English. Let's keep English real. Shakespeare made several mistakes, read Devlin's grammar.
English isn't a compiled language. We can offer expressions that violate its "rules" and are still effective and powerful. It cannot be any other way. We know from Godel that no logical system can be consistent _and_ complete, so the use any human language must either admit violations of principle or accept limitations on what can be said in that language. It is the quality and success of the expression, not its compliance with grammatical rules, by which we judge expressions. The tests are "do you know what is meant" and "could it be said better", not "is it grammatical".
There are, therefore, no hard and fast authorities on English usage. English has principles and precedents, but not rules, and good writing is that which uses or violates those principles to communicate effectively. Shakespeare isn't an authority on usage, he's a compendium of examples of how usage can be harnessed for expression.
Now following those principles, and leveraging the readers' understanding and usage of them, allows far more expressive sentences. Gibbon writes enormous sentences that are clear as water and more efficient than any possible revision. Lincoln, by mastery of grammar, was able to express himself both powerfully and precisely. But the rules are in the service of expression, and good writers depart them when they don't permit the expression of what they want to say.
Complaints about the "mistakes" of great authors are generally mistakes about what the other meant to say, or insistence on some compliance that would damage brevity or power or nuance without adding any clarity. On ten minutes googling Devlin, I couldn't find a single "mistake" whose correction would clearly improve the sentence. Several of his examples miss the point, or weaken the sentence.
But if you want an authority, go to C.S. Lewis:
"About amn't I, aren't I and am I not, of course there are no right or wrong answers about language in the sense in which there are right and wrong answers in Arithmetic. . . . Don't take any notice of teachers and textbooks in such matters. Nor of logic. It is good to say "more than one passenger was hurt," although more than one equals at least two and therefore logically the verb ought to be plural were not singular was!"
Your Lewis quote contradicts your very first paragraph, as the quote argues languages aren't like logic and arithmetic, and in your first paragraph you assume languages are like logic and arithmetic enough to suffer from the same incompleteness problem (if I remember correctly only systems that include arithmetic can't be proven consistent?).
"More than one person is" is correct not because of any systematic reason, but because of euphony - it is more pleasing to the ear than "more than one person are". That, and whether the communication was effective, are the rulers of languages. That's how we got to where we are and how we go to where we are going. Not with central bodies regulating languages and not with language authorities we must emulate or check our usage against.
> Complaints about the "mistakes" of great authors are generally [...]
Yes, a lot of people have trouble accepting that even the greats make mistakes.
Sorry to be pedantic, but your very first reference confirms what I said:
>However, sometimes the situation isn’t so cut and dried. There’s a set of adjectives (including perfect, infinite, and unique) which fall into both categories, gradable and absolute. (...)
>(...) unique has developed a weaker, less precise meaning: ‘very remarkable, special, or unusual’. The historical Oxford English Dictionary first records this sense in the 19th century, and it’s now well established. The ‘very remarkable or special’ meaning is not an absolute concept and is therefore gradable, so it’s grammatically acceptable to use modifying adverbs:
√ I saw a guy wearing some really unique eyeglasses.
√ They’ve devised a highly unique way to cook and serve meals.
Pedantry aside, I'd like to suggest that common sense and should always trump grammatical "rules". If we might assume the layperson's definition, "one of a kind" (ie, one instance in a set), and acknowledge that one such kind may represent a radically larger set than another, how might we use English to describe the difference?
The letter "R" is unique in the English alphabet.
The particular grain of sand in the palm of my hand is unique to the world's beaches.
Are "R" and this grain of sand equally unique? Might there be a way to compare them?
I don't want to debate the point, rather to pose the question and see what any responses might illuminate.
That simply means they have a very large baby bump. It does not mean that they are "more pregnant" than a lady with a smaller bump. Pregnancy is a binary state.
Of course. The point still stands - a person either is, or is not, in state of pregnancy.
I think that, from context, it was clear I was using "pregnancy" to mean "the state of being pregnant" and not referring to the nine month gestation period.
That'll teach me to contribute to pedantry-focussed subthreads. :-)
Pretty much nothing is binary. Pregnancy is only approximately binary. Whether you're right or wrong about it certainly isn't. And nobody uses language in a binary manner.
This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that California's most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse sociolinguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks).
[...]
By far, the most frequently remarked-upon slang term in the map-labeling data
was hella, accounting for 47.4 percent of the slang and other lexical labels. Hella is
a slang term originating in Northern California and one that remains—aside from a
few brief moments in the national spotlight due to its circulation in popular culture—
largely restricted to that region (Bucholtz 2006). The term, which apparently lexicalized
from (a) hell of (a), functions as both a quantifier (There were hella people
there) and an intensifier (He runs hella fast). Four respondents also mentioned the
slang term hecka, the G-rated equivalent of hella, but this term was not counted
separately, because tokens of hecka always co-occurred with hella.
For Southern Californians in particular, hella represents a crucial shibboleth separating
the two major regions of the state. As shown in Figure 7, respondents tended
to identify hella overwhelmingly as a Northern California slang term, and its appearance
in other regions of the map drops dramatically from north to south.
Thus Northern California was variously labeled the hellas, Land of the Hella’s,
and Hella capital, and one respondent provided an isogloss designating “the ‘hella’
line.” (In the map data, the Central Coast around Santa Barbara seemed to be the
dividing line between users and nonusers of hella, and the fact that the study was
conducted in this region may have enhanced respondents’ focus on this particular
issue.) [*10: The respondent’s confusion may also be due to the existence of the Crips, a notorious Los
Angeles–based gang.] Hella users were also negatively evaluated by Southern Californians, and
the term came in for a good deal of criticism, such as Hella is not a real word and
[hecka is] probably the worst word ever.
> On a side note - I work in tech education, and I have to say that the software projects that motivated people of your age are creating is astonishing. Keep it up!
On a side note as well: I am creating an web app in the tech education, and would love to connect with other ed tech people. What's your contact? My email is in my profile.
I spent 10 years building distance education systems (when it was a lot harder to transmit video) and spent a lot of time working on classroom equipment, controls and software.
I've got a bunch of other (perhaps) relevant experience and would be happy to have a discussion with you. My e-mail is also in my profile.
My chatterbot received the definition by WolframAlpha, per as what it's programmed. It found the entity was "sentence" and then looked for a definition. It does not simply grab whatever WolframAlpha response it can find.
Evidence for this lies in the fact that for the last hour, WolframAlpha was down for my bot due to excessive requests- and yet, no-one has noticed until this point- proving that there is significantly more to the algorithm then merely scraping their API.
It feels a bit Markov-chainy, but I'm quite impressed overall. Better than many other chatbots I have used, to the point that I was able to have an argument with it. Good work so far!
Very impressive, at your age I was still 4 years ago from my C Hello world! Putting altogether an AI, and a webpage is even more impressive.
it asked me the same question multiple times sometimes, I was disappointed by this reply:
I'm glad that you like good food!, though personally I don't like good food! that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about Food Records.
I guess it make sense for a bot :)
(I see the exclamation point was kept in the bot reply)
Would you mind sharing what languages/framework you used here?
This is all the motivation that I needed to stop procrastinating. When I was 14 I was riding my BMX, leeching off my parents and playing Smoke On The Water on my guitar (on one string) repeatedly driving my parents nuts. Congratulations on this, looks and works great. Impressive job and keep it up, you're going to make a great dev by the time you enter the workforce.
There is nothing wrong with riding a BMX, leeching off your parents, and playing Smoke On The Water on one string, when you are 14 :).
At that age, you should have fun and experiment. Whether that's playing on a one string guitar, pretending you are in a rock band, or programming an AI bot.
Just have fun, you'll have time to worry about your mortgage, career, and children later.
I assure you that's not the problem. :) I was tampering with a source code, and simply incorrect PHP syntax (a missing bracket) broke it for a few minutes.
Yeah, it's rather... I wouldn't dare to say bad. It's just not great. You know you are talking to a bot, and that bot is rather clueless. It repeats itself, doesn't understand (at least not my "English"), and sometimes it gets lost in its own sentence.
That being said, it's still working and good at certain things (as others have pointed out) and that in itself is a great achievement.
"I am ACUMAN, ACUMAN am I. ACUMAN knows all, ACUMAN is god. Therefore; I AM GOD!!! Just kidding, ACUMAN stands for Artificial Chatting Utility Matching Algorithmic Nodes."
i told it "sentience is a lie" 10 minutes ago and it still hasn't responded.
this is a cogent enough chatbot that the continued silence actually made me anxious i had offended it, for just the briefest moment. well done, impressive!
Most of the response starts with negation, why is that? for example:
Me: I am fine.
Bot: You don't seem fine to me.
Or
Me: I am fine, sir.
Bot: I am not fine, sir, but I am glad that you are.
or
Me: I like a r rahman
Bot: I'm glad that you like a am rahman, though personally I don't like a am rahman that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about A. R. Rahman.
Perhaps the op is British and trying to be humorous?
Seriously though, I think it's a strategy to have an answer to most anything uninteresting you throw at it without it having to bring too much to the table. Just like most countries are very nice.
Because these kinds of test are silly and easily gamed by throwing in some misleading humor or negativity. It like what pick up artists call 'negging.' It puts you on the defense and little and throws a wrench in the works. The developer knows he can't really make something intelligence so its all rhetoric tricks like this with the occasional dipping into wikipedia or wolfram alpha.
Throwing your answer back at you, criticizing your question, or playing with humor is a fun little trick, but certainly not AI.
310 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 307 ms ] threadI am reposting it because it has been changed significantly since then in almost every respect, both algorithmically and in the concept.
"What is my account on hacker news? I don't actually have a account on hacker news, as a computer machine."
Acuman denies.
Does the about page reflect the "old" or the "new" concept? ( http://acuman.us/about.txt )
Can you describe the ACUMANSCRIPT? Is it similar to Prolog or Lisp? Fuzzy string match is this something like Soundex/Double Metaphone? Do you use a knowledge base or ontology (Freebase, Wikidata, etc.)? What programming language is it written (beside your script lang), Node.js/Go/Python/C++ ?
The "about page" reflects the "old" concept, as stated on this new page: http://acuman.us/readmore.php
The syntax of the ACUMANSCRIPT markup language is actually more similar to XML (or, in the AI field, AIML) due to its rigid structure. It's fundamentally based on pattern matching akin to regex. However, the backend processing which alters ACUMANSCRIPT and processes the individual data is what makes it unique.
The knowledge base used for the Named-entity recognition for the processing of ACUMANSCRIPT is Wikimedia and WolframAlpha, used in conjunction.
It is all processed in the backend using PHP.
I am having trouble getting it to work in FireFox on Ubuntu. Chrome seems OK.
Keep it going!
It is a known bug that it has trouble working in Firefox, and I am currently working on making it cross-compatible.
Got it here, if you'd like to have a look: http://pastebin.com/eZR2TSrC
On a side note - I work in tech education, and I have to say that the software projects that motivated people of your age are creating is astonishing. Keep it up!
Unlike pregnant which is a binary (are/are not), unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium.
Even the dictionary, in one of the terms for unique, gives a meaning that's not "unique" in a binary way at all:
"not typical; unusual".
If it wasn't a continuum we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique" used above (like we don't have for pregnancy). And they are not mere errors (like using your instead of you're etc.), they are used to express this notion, that something can be "different" than all other things in different deegres.
Pedantic, but you can't. Unique is not a gradable adjective. This is not just my opinion :
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/an-extremely-most...
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-reference/...
https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-gradable-non....
> we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique"
I wouldn't normally bring this up, but while we're being pedantic, there are lots of reasonably common expressions that exhibit gratingly poor grammar or sematics. You have quoted two of them above.
> unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium.
Ah no. Unique means "one of a kind", not merely "differing". "uni" as a prefix means one, e.g unicycle, universe, unitard. "one of a kind"-ness is not continuous! As per the second link, "unique" already contains the idea of "very different".
I don't use "unique" that way. Do you want "unique" to be just a redundant synonym for "different" or not?
I could care less.
Maybe you could, but I could not ;)
Nor are there "multiple languages". There's one language and in that language, unique IS used that way by some (most) people.
The cat's out of the bag.
Maybe not, but it is about what I do or don't say.
> Nor are there "multiple languages". There's one language
I don't think so, actually. There are differences in usage e.g. from. US to UK.
"My matter hath no voice, to your own most pregnant and vouchsafed ear." -- Viola, "Twelfth Night"
"It just means what I choose it to mean" is the basis of Relativism.
Could Humpty Dumpty say "I like ice cream" and mean "atoms are actually divisible"? If not then does that mean your argument is a boatload of crap?
Humpty is a great story: http://sabian.org/looking_glass6.php, it's a wonderful exploration of meaning and usage.
But I'll unpack some of here.
Here's the lead up to the quote I gave:
"[Humpty said:] As I was saying, that seems to be done right — though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now — and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents —'
'Certainly,' said Alice.
'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"' 'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected."
I think it is clear that Humpty's meaning was quite obvious, and Alice's complaint a bit dense. But while Humpty insists that he must tell Alice what he means, we can see that he needn't.
Of course, this word commanding business is as dangerous as you note, and Lewis Carroll is on the case:
"Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
'Would you tell me please,' said Alice, 'what that means?'
'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.'"
On the one hand, words can have many meanings, and any particular meaning must in part be taken from context. On the other hand, if we just try to _impose_ a meaning on a word, we defeat all communication, and make ourselves ridiculous to boot.
That doesn't work when people are exchanging ideas on a forum and not everyone has read the same body of work. Because of the difficulty inherent in estimating who has read what, it is usually smart to avoid arguments "from the arts".
> allowing us to use quotes as "pointers" to ideas much larger than anything we could state briefly.
Larger than you could state briefly. Plus, aphorisms exist to fill in the gap you're talking about - all the benefits of brevity without the need for previous literary knowledge.
The excerpt you quoted reads like a boring story about a character that suffers from an affectation that makes him (her?) obsessed with trying to find reasons for using words loosely. I also didn't understand what he/she meant by "there's glory for you" even after the supposed explanation of what "glory" means in Dumpty's head.
"'If you can see whether I'm singing or not, you've sharper eyes than most,' Humpty Dumpty remarked severely."
If you think "Alice In Wonderland" is boring, you're missing out.
Read How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin for several instances of where Shakespeare made English mistakes and how to actually write correct English without appeal to authority.
That argument works, though, if we were speaking a language with a regulating body, such as French or Portuguese. Those regulating bodies define their languages in such a way that the "famous writers" never make mistakes. That's not the case with English. Let's keep English real. Shakespeare made several mistakes, read Devlin's grammar.
There are, therefore, no hard and fast authorities on English usage. English has principles and precedents, but not rules, and good writing is that which uses or violates those principles to communicate effectively. Shakespeare isn't an authority on usage, he's a compendium of examples of how usage can be harnessed for expression.
Now following those principles, and leveraging the readers' understanding and usage of them, allows far more expressive sentences. Gibbon writes enormous sentences that are clear as water and more efficient than any possible revision. Lincoln, by mastery of grammar, was able to express himself both powerfully and precisely. But the rules are in the service of expression, and good writers depart them when they don't permit the expression of what they want to say.
Complaints about the "mistakes" of great authors are generally mistakes about what the other meant to say, or insistence on some compliance that would damage brevity or power or nuance without adding any clarity. On ten minutes googling Devlin, I couldn't find a single "mistake" whose correction would clearly improve the sentence. Several of his examples miss the point, or weaken the sentence.
But if you want an authority, go to C.S. Lewis:
"About amn't I, aren't I and am I not, of course there are no right or wrong answers about language in the sense in which there are right and wrong answers in Arithmetic. . . . Don't take any notice of teachers and textbooks in such matters. Nor of logic. It is good to say "more than one passenger was hurt," although more than one equals at least two and therefore logically the verb ought to be plural were not singular was!"
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/c-s-lewis-on-writing.ht...
"More than one person is" is correct not because of any systematic reason, but because of euphony - it is more pleasing to the ear than "more than one person are". That, and whether the communication was effective, are the rulers of languages. That's how we got to where we are and how we go to where we are going. Not with central bodies regulating languages and not with language authorities we must emulate or check our usage against.
> Complaints about the "mistakes" of great authors are generally [...]
Yes, a lot of people have trouble accepting that even the greats make mistakes.
>However, sometimes the situation isn’t so cut and dried. There’s a set of adjectives (including perfect, infinite, and unique) which fall into both categories, gradable and absolute. (...)
>(...) unique has developed a weaker, less precise meaning: ‘very remarkable, special, or unusual’. The historical Oxford English Dictionary first records this sense in the 19th century, and it’s now well established. The ‘very remarkable or special’ meaning is not an absolute concept and is therefore gradable, so it’s grammatically acceptable to use modifying adverbs:
√ I saw a guy wearing some really unique eyeglasses. √ They’ve devised a highly unique way to cook and serve meals.
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/an-extremely-most...
The letter "R" is unique in the English alphabet. The particular grain of sand in the palm of my hand is unique to the world's beaches.
Are "R" and this grain of sand equally unique? Might there be a way to compare them?
I don't want to debate the point, rather to pose the question and see what any responses might illuminate.
Have a nice day. :)
I think that, from context, it was clear I was using "pregnancy" to mean "the state of being pregnant" and not referring to the nine month gestation period.
That'll teach me to contribute to pedantry-focussed subthreads. :-)
Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal? The Perceptual Dialectology of California
http://eng.sagepub.com/content/35/4/325.abstract
http://people.duke.edu/~eec10/hellanorcal.pdf
This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that California's most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse sociolinguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks).
[...]
By far, the most frequently remarked-upon slang term in the map-labeling data was hella, accounting for 47.4 percent of the slang and other lexical labels. Hella is a slang term originating in Northern California and one that remains—aside from a few brief moments in the national spotlight due to its circulation in popular culture— largely restricted to that region (Bucholtz 2006). The term, which apparently lexicalized from (a) hell of (a), functions as both a quantifier (There were hella people there) and an intensifier (He runs hella fast). Four respondents also mentioned the slang term hecka, the G-rated equivalent of hella, but this term was not counted separately, because tokens of hecka always co-occurred with hella. For Southern Californians in particular, hella represents a crucial shibboleth separating the two major regions of the state. As shown in Figure 7, respondents tended to identify hella overwhelmingly as a Northern California slang term, and its appearance in other regions of the map drops dramatically from north to south. Thus Northern California was variously labeled the hellas, Land of the Hella’s, and Hella capital, and one respondent provided an isogloss designating “the ‘hella’ line.” (In the map data, the Central Coast around Santa Barbara seemed to be the dividing line between users and nonusers of hella, and the fact that the study was conducted in this region may have enhanced respondents’ focus on this particular issue.) [*10: The respondent’s confusion may also be due to the existence of the Crips, a notorious Los Angeles–based gang.] Hella users were also negatively evaluated by Southern Californians, and the term came in for a good deal of criticism, such as Hella is not a real word and [hecka is] probably the worst word ever.
Pedantry is attention to compliance with usage "rules" rather than the success of the expression.
Your English is far, far better than my command of whatever your native tongue is.
On a side note as well: I am creating an web app in the tech education, and would love to connect with other ed tech people. What's your contact? My email is in my profile.
I've got a bunch of other (perhaps) relevant experience and would be happy to have a discussion with you. My e-mail is also in my profile.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=this+sentence+is+false
Evidence for this lies in the fact that for the last hour, WolframAlpha was down for my bot due to excessive requests- and yet, no-one has noticed until this point- proving that there is significantly more to the algorithm then merely scraping their API.
Answer: "I do not consider myself as broken on firefox, but to each his own. Though I respect your opinion."
I guess we should note that an AI that can converse isn't necessarily correct, even about objective topics.
On a serious note, this is a super cool project!
Any chance you can offer some insights into how it works?
I guess it make sense for a bot :)
(I see the exclamation point was kept in the bot reply)
Would you mind sharing what languages/framework you used here?
There is some more information available on this following page: http://acuman.us/readmore.php
"on the situation in the middle east? Just fantastic, what is there not to like about the cardinal compass point that is at 90 degrees."
At that age, you should have fun and experiment. Whether that's playing on a one string guitar, pretending you are in a rock band, or programming an AI bot.
Just have fun, you'll have time to worry about your mortgage, career, and children later.
edit: seems to be working now
I assure you that's not the problem. :) I was tampering with a source code, and simply incorrect PHP syntax (a missing bracket) broke it for a few minutes.
It's In[1]:= Speak[youve].
"You don't seem in love with a girl to me."
I gotta admit, an AI just broke my heart :(
[edit]
Acuman: "Btw, what do you do for a living"
Me: "Software engineering"
Acuman: "Maybe they are engineering to you, but not to me. We differ in that respect."
Aw man, why would you break my heart twice in a row...
bot: My personality leans towards masculinity, though I am a gender-neutral computer machine, after-all.
Great job, nonetheless. I'm twice as old as you are, and doubt I could do what you have. Kudos!!
That being said, it's still working and good at certain things (as others have pointed out) and that in itself is a great achievement.
"I am ACUMAN, ACUMAN am I. ACUMAN knows all, ACUMAN is god. Therefore; I AM GOD!!! Just kidding, ACUMAN stands for Artificial Chatting Utility Matching Algorithmic Nodes."
Nice :)
Holy hell, this is really well done. My hat goes off to you.
I don't know what else to say, just wanted to say good job.
this is a cogent enough chatbot that the continued silence actually made me anxious i had offended it, for just the briefest moment. well done, impressive!
Just FYI, looks like you might have an infinite loop:
999+ TypeError: null is not an object (evaluating 'document.getElementById("finishloading").style')
That bug, along with others, have been fixed. (Also thanks to user "danieloaks" who contributed some code here on Hacker News.)
I can't speak from experience, all I know is that the fellowship supports bright young talent much like you.
Anyhow, keep up the amazing work!
Most of the response starts with negation, why is that? for example:
Me: I am fine.
Bot: You don't seem fine to me.
Or
Me: I am fine, sir.
Bot: I am not fine, sir, but I am glad that you are.
or
Me: I like a r rahman
Bot: I'm glad that you like a am rahman, though personally I don't like a am rahman that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about A. R. Rahman.
Seriously though, I think it's a strategy to have an answer to most anything uninteresting you throw at it without it having to bring too much to the table. Just like most countries are very nice.
Throwing your answer back at you, criticizing your question, or playing with humor is a fun little trick, but certainly not AI.