Re:

noam, as always, spending time. was great/ first draft. of the Chomsky Challenge. Produce a non-living system that can be put into an environment for a while and --- 1. be able to discriminate language from noise. prize a 1 dollar bill signed by Noam and 100k. 2. be able to discriminate coherent sentences from non (we provide 10 test sentences). prize a 10 dollar signed Chomsky bill, and 500k. 3. a language learning module. 20 dollar bill signed and 1 million, 4. a sense making module that can understand meaning and inference. etc. the non recommendation recommendation. ie the student has a nice family. etc. a 100 dollar signed bill and 10 million dollars. ? --- If your left leaning, is in conflict with a money prize, we could substitute ---your prize money goes to charity,- airline tickets to the Gaza strip. - Nicaragua, North Korea, and 1000 blank protest placards ? or top prize includes 1000 protesters of your choice for three demonstrations :)

Hi Jeffrey,

Ah very cool.

So let me try a few out.

I guess it partly (! of course!) depends on how much we get to stick into the box. I'm fine with prize money, mostly because as you know from Marvin, there's no way to get funding for "real" problems like these or those that Marvin studies, so I'd be overjoyed to get some way to fund new students....

Challenge 1. Discriminating language from noise. This is doable. Partha Niyogi nearly did it. A six-month effort.

Challenge 2. Ah, depends on the sentences and what 'coherent' means. Does Noam mean 'screwed up in some way'? We're not so far from that. Further than 1. That system I showed you that can isolate different factors in syntax as a small set of constraints can do some of that. Recall Shimon Ullman's 'rigidity principle' about the interpretation of points moving in the visual field - same coherence idea.

Challenges 3 and 4 are much harder, we'd have to know more about 'meaning' and 'inference'.

I wouldn't be happy with statistical curve fitting here.

Finally - though I will drop this, because your time is too valuable and the problems you and Noam pose are the important ones, to me — what was your estimate of how much that twitter-in-love entrepreneur would have lost if he did honestly follow his twitter-predictor during the first week of this month? I guess I am still baffled about the "market" for their product unless it's as you say, the market for the new, shiny toys - which is just about salesmanship, not media stuff science. Anyway, I'll drop it - I was just curious as why/how any of that social media stuff would work. I suppose they will say that they have 300 M users, not all of them will be lying... and one can sort the liars from the non-liars....but so what?

best wishes bob

i will spend all the time you like teaching you about investing and the markets. simpler than it appears.. I would like chomsky to follow in the footsteps of hibert, turing, and encourage work in their fields by presenting goals to the disciples.

Jeffrey

So your view is that the social media jazz is a fad that will fizzle and fade fairly soon, no? Bob

it will "evolve" ::))

Hah. All lineages go extinct. One interesting thing that Steve Gould noted was that this takes about the same time for all vertebrates.... For fads too.

worse, danny kahnemans work would suggest that positive sentiment is expressed once you are already the owner. not predictive of future, so that if you own china, you speak highly of it. and then when they devalue everyone is caught with their pants down.

re the chomsky challenge I will fund. and my only role is to stimulate conversation amongst you and your colleagues how best to stimulate the science.

Yes...

Great thing you are doing for Marvin! DARPA used to be filled with princes of science 30 years ago. No longer I fear. Perhaps some day I'll do 5% of what these people have done.