Re: Re:

You would have been proud my friend the sec gen of the council of Europe Thjorborn Jagland had to give a speech on terrorism to the security council. Last night I presented your arguments, re hypocrisy, he was shocked but loved it.

Glad it worked. Hope that the speech was of some interest.

He is the head of the human rights court in Strasbourg, former prime minister of Norway. He would be happy to have a dinner with us. Subject: drones, solitary confinement, death penalty (Europe does not have one, so if killing terrorists is to be under an act of war, argument, then they, as enemies, have war rights). Tribalism, mafia, Syria, Ukraine, Saudi, Egypt, Libya. We have a great friendship. I give him his financial ABC's class. He gives me my pragmatic politics lessons. FYI great similarity now as the old political guard seem to reflect the patterns of the old long-term investors, (skills of planning, executing, etc.) now confronted by media and pressured to make quick decisions, i.e., behaving like inexperienced short-term traders. FYI I have read a great number of language papers. Many if not most, misuse the concept of probability, making naive, erroneous uses of the word, hence forming nonsensical conclusions. (Like the silly, life on other planets "calculation". Probability needs repetition and symmetry, historical events do not have either!)

Valeria's not here right now, so will have to check with her about late September. Really intriguing possibilities, and a delightful offer.

On Yang, I read his work quite differently. He does make use of word frequencies and probability distributions, but as far as I am aware in pretty straightforward and innocuous ways. And he's quite sophisticated about these matters. Smart and interesting guy. You might want to contact him directly.

I don't recall his using Zipf's "laws," but it wouldn't matter much. Mandelbrot showed back in the '50s that they were a statistical artifact, near meaningless. I was, incidentally, surprised to see how he dealt with this result in his autobiography. I think he called it his "Keplerian moment" or something like that.

I think you might try to plan on late September, taking my apt and spending a few days with Valeria in the city, as it is the opening of the UN general assembly, as well as the Clinton global initiative. New York is rife with people with at least influence, if not new ideas. I, we, can organize many fun interactions. My house becomes a respite for the select few, to take off their ties, and talk openly. You would be welcome to join as many create or participate as you prefer. Yang's work deals with language as signals. His reliance on Zipf-like distributions is a good example of naive probabilities. Empirically Zipf appears, but cannot be derived from any of his or anyone else's to date. So somewhat misleading to suggest the "probability of word, x appearing," it is the mistake of frequency vs probability, and careless common usage.

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Interesting image, but I don't see what it tells us about language.

The problem looks to me like this, roughly.

Take, say, the human visual system. There's a genetic component that determines that humans will have a mammalian and not an insect visual system, and much else. Same with other subsystems of the organism — "organs," modules." Language in particular. The technical name for this component, whatever it turns out to be, is UG. UG therefore determines that certain systems are possible I-languages for humans, others are not. I presume that is what the "biological organizing principle" for language is. It's plainly not an input system, though it determines possible input systems for human languages. I don't see how we improve understanding by looking at it from this perspective.

A minor technical problem, not serious, has to do with distinguishing digital infinity from continuity, like continuous lines on the surface of a hemisphere.

I think you'll find Yang interesting.

it is my failing not yours. the old math requires numbers. too limiting. (we can put a metric overlay on later in the chain) imagine a shape in real space. it is readily apparent if a line either fits on the shape or not. how do you know? you compare the line with the shape. your visual system allows the mental shape to either map onto or not onto the shape in a coherent manner. the shape is not an input device, it is an object. the organizing principle of the shape is language, the shape is a collection of grammars. lines on the shape are either coherent or not. coherent ones are legitimate sentences.

yang is flexible in his use of the term probability. for example he in a number of papers refers to zipf as a probability distribution. i have checked a number of his papers after your last remark, I think it is a mistake. he means that after empirical measurement. for ex word frequency, if ten times out of 100 the corpus has the word x. then he describes the probability of finding the word as 10 percent. this is not correct. it is only the probability of finding the word in the frequency list. but he is very accomplished at mathematical models.

I follow up to the point where you write "the organizing principle of the shape is language... No doubt it can (partially) be described in language, but that's not what you mean.

Zipf's law is a rank-frequency distribution. And also meaningless, as Mandelbrot showed 60 years ago. I hope Yang is clear about this. He surely knows.

1. dont you have any questions about money, finance? I owe you some knowledge.

2. to say the shape can be described by language is redundant. the "shape" is the metaphor for an n-dimensional object, it stands outside of time. as do grammars, but sentences do not, they require time. the shape is somewhat like a fitness landscape? contrasted with communication which also requires time dimension and biology that needs and uses energy. I suggest the mammal Ug is a subcategory of all UGs and that as biology prefers redundancy. the other modules, ie vision are small distortions of it.

3. during that UN period I often give a "money 101 to world leaders who have in many cases little knowledge of a subject to which they give many speeches and policy directives, as they only have experiences such as that of a general, a politician, in some instances a disk jockey, before having to run their country. I would love to consider some of what you thought was "fair" with regard to allocations if you were running the show.

I wouldn't dare to run the sh=w for money 101, but I'm sure I would learn a lot by sitting

It's true that grammars stand=outside of time, a fact that many linguists and psychologists don'= understand. There are suggestions of something like a "universal UG," =hough not couched in just these terms. Notably Michael Sherman =99s theory that a universal genome appeared at about the time of the Cambr=an explosion, and all forms of life are minor variants of it.

1. if you would design a fair tax system. =AO what goals would you suggest. I ve been researching how to start a new =inancial system for Zimbabwe. its now so broken it prese=ts a clean petrie dish, exchange rate of a billion billion dollars =AO equals one us dollar

• 2 berwick and yang. clever. =olution hunters, . not sure if question raisers ,=sherman better

• 3 . taking sherman work . and my conjectures =C2 ug 's would be genetically created =C2 modules of "sense makers. " structures t=at were able to separate sense from non-sense. I think there would be a ug for vision . smell etc and probably similar or=connected in some way.

1.=C2 Not a trivial matter. I'm not the=best person to ask. I'd suggest contacting people who =99ve really thought seriously about these issues, like Robert Pollin, a fi=e independent economist at U Mass Amherst

2.=C2 Sherman's speculation is an interesting exten=ion of recent discoveries about conservation, deep homologies, regulatory =ircuits, and other elements of what's sometimes called "the evo-devo revolution." It remains to be seen whether a=ything can be done with it. I think you underestimate the contributi=ns of Berwick and his students, including Yang.

1 will do , by the way new =ousing starts were the highest in 7 years. the mortgage intere=t deduction cheerleaders , ( not me ). are thrilled.

• 2.1 am willing to be convinced, as always=/u>

3. my admittedly naive point is that &qu=t;mechanism" ,I believe ,is the wrong concept. driven in error,=by the machine -computer analog since the early 1900s . instead =AO think of probability, it is not a mechanism

I wouldn't take the term =80 mechanism" too literally. It refers to whatever is taki=g place in the brain. For some, as most of those in the Nowak group, it means neural nets. =For Gallistel, it's processes internal to the cell. Useful t= look at these matters in terms of Mares three levels: computatio=, algorithm, mechanism.

1 you are a treat and=l very much appreciate your non finance views.): 2 ehud barak will b= with me for the weekend in ny. not sure where you are?

Marr,-try, Marr, probabilty, symmetry. ent=opy. it might look like computation but it is not. it mi=ht look like algorithm but it is not. the flip of a coin does not co=pute, have an algorithm or a mechanism. though it might look as if

it does. it is not an input system, there is not mechanism drivni=g the heads and tails towards equal numbers. , there is not nature looking=to see what the previous results were and computing the next result. like =our ug it is more of a miracle.

Have a good weekend. I wonder what he=thinks about where the state is heading now.

We'll probably be at the Cape= in Wellfleet, if we can make it.

Maybe there are miracles, but I think=more prosaic approaches yield rich results in domains like vision (Marr =80 s main concern) and language. Like some of those I've mentioned. I don't see how to progress in other=ways.

1.do you have any specific questions for him? =C2 he thinks its not going in the right direction. =AO ie. bibi, not stro=g enough to make tough decisions. . ehud trusts hamas more than abbas. I know you dont like telephones but w= could set up a text exchange if you wanted to.

2. more importan=

I use my coin flip analogy often. ie. . single cell experim=nts, like looking through a microscope at my coin , measure its cont=nt it moment, its shape, all trying to figure out why the res=lt after a long while is always the same -equal number of tail= and heads. a consistent result. no algorithm , no comp=tation . Why i am pushing you on this , is that i firmly=believe that language needs a theory, cognitive science =eeds a theory, your minions and intellectual offspring are like =AO bio engineers --they will be able to mimic some of th= behavior , yes it is amazing but not interesting. you have th=ught long and hard and more importantly have seen what does NOT work. =AO einsteins =hought experiments led to truly remarkable results in physics. Im hoping that resu=ts like that can be achieved for biology