brockf

Right, I think we're in agreement then. Statistical learning is the domain-general tool. Or one of them.

It's the domain specific tools that are up in the air, though, and what I'm interested in.

Just to clarify my position (as it is misunderstood above): I believe it is one of the most important factors in acquiring language. 100%. However, I personally believe that it's a domain-general tool exploited by a domain-specific language module adhering to evolved instincts in language acquisition.

This is where the debates really begin :)

I think that most people who believe in some form of the motor theory of speech perception will also believe that speech evolved from manual gesture.

Others scoff at the motor theory. In fact, I'd say I'm in the minority by bringing it up with any regularity.

If the question, what is "known" about the evolution of our ability to communicate, I wouldn't have much to point you towards. Most is theory based on modern evidence, somewhat like armchair psychology. Other people point to our ability to integrate non-verbal gestures into our comprehension, activation of our motor cortex prior to semantic/phonetic network activation when disambiguating difficult speech sounds, our ability to synthesize visual/auditory sources of information when the visual information relates to speech gestures (mouth/tongue movements), etc.

There's a big difference between "grunts and basic noises" and language. Or at least, that's my opinion. In this same line, I don't believe dogs/monkeys/birds/bees have language, despite the ability to communicate.

This view is just to simplistic to hold its weight when you really look at the intricacies of language and its evolutionary history which, by the way, I would suggest comes from manual gesture and not grunting.

Where is the existing evidence? And what evidence in modern science can possibly look into the future and make a prediction about something that right now is so far beyond our grasp?

Statistical learning explains a lot. I'm a huge fan of it. Skinner's Behaviourism also explained a lot in psychology. But, just as in the case of behaviourism, I fear that statistical learning has/will hit a wall at which its explanations become futile and overly simplified.

My personal belief is that, at that wall, we'll see that human language instincts and evolved language-specific mechanisms will be what we are looking for.

If that was true, then why did humans evolve to speak at all? Why, if speech is simply a reaction to statistics we are tracking and behaviours that have been rewarded, would the first utterances have been made? And how do we make completely novel utterances that attempt to express our otherwise abstract thoughts?

Since when has science been reasonable? :)

In situations like this, I tend to speak in theoretical absolutes. A computer that "could - like humans - learn to produce infinite, novel, contextual, and meaningful grammatical utterances" isn't even on the timeline right now, but it's the theoretical goal in showing that we understand language acquisition (ontogenetic development), evolution (phylogenetic development), and production.

Just because that goals seems unattainable doesn't, to me, mean that we need to aim any lower. Now, this is premised on my belief that mimicking phenomena with statistical learning is not as intellectually satisfying as understanding the underlying cognitive systems, but that's not believed by everyone.

I absolutely agree. I don't care if the computer that automatically transcribes my voicemail understands speech either - I just want it to be correct.

That technology is impressive to the utmost degree, I just don't think it should be the endgoal of modern science.

Throughout history, there have been many "well known and debated" arguments that have proven to be idiotic. See: the shape of the Earth.

This isn't one of them, though. And I didn't mean to imply that anyone was an idiot.

Instead of critiquing how I said something, or that I said something at all, can you tell me what I am missing? I'm obviously missing something - Norvig is no idiot.

Chomsky's one paragraph quote at the beginning of this article is more clear and thoughtful than the rest of this. I feel the author's missing the point.

In the case of language, observing and reporting statistical probabilities in written/spoken language output does very little to explain the cognitive systems used in acquiring and using language. Even one statistical anomaly serves to show that statistical learning is NOT the entire picture when it comes to language development.

There was another article on HN a while back that had another great quote from Chomsky that does well to illustrate what I feel is his main point here: "Fooling people into mistaking a submarine for a whale doesn't show that submarines really swim; nor does it fail to establish the fact". Creating a computer that can produce millions of grammatical utterances does little to show that we understand language systems. Now, if a computer could - like humans - learn to produce infinite, novel, contextual, and meaningful grammatical utterances, that's a different story. But that story will take a lot more than statistical learning to write.

I advocate for a lot of intellectual and software freedoms, but abolishing copyright and all intellectual property concerns (of which this one is entirely valid) seems a bit ludicrous.

Thank you. This isn't the first time I've heard this, but it's going to be something I will have to keep reminding myself of, I'm sure.

Thank you for the warning. I know it's brutal, and it's far from a guarantee. However, if all else fails, I'll just come back to this... or so I keep telling myself :)

I'm telling myself not to be nervous about all the brilliant people, but to try and learn from them along the way.

Totally. To some people, being independent with their own business - regardless of what the do - is meaningful enough. I find some meaning there too. But in 25 years, for me, I'd rather say I teach students about the developing mind than help build websites. To each their own, for sure.

Anecdote: I'm 22, have a successful web application business that earns more than any of those median earnings, and am scaling my involvement (and earnings) down to begin my PhD in cognitive science (under the umbrella of psychology, for most).

Why would I leave the "path to riches" to earn - at best - the same as I've made as a teenager? Meaning. Research and teaching give meaning to an otherwise dull life of emailing people I've never met about issues that no one will remember in a few years time. It's fun to work with people, fun to talk about issues that no one quite understands (language acquisition, in my case), and exhilarating to teach students who will hopefully outperform me in every way.

This community is largely driven by money. People ask "How hard is it to make an app that makes $XXXX in revenue?" at least once per week. But there are other things that provide meaning and drive in people's lives. I've forgotten it on a fair share of occasions, but I hope I never look down on someone who dedicates four years (or more) of their time to studying the arts/humanities as opposed to the "hard" sciences or engineering.

There is really something wrong in the job market when I work two years to get a good hire for my small development company (at a good hourly rate, telecommuting, etc.) and people like Vladimir have to give away their services...

I do the designs myself - thanks for the compliment!

This is the latest, completely rebuilt version of my web publishing and e-commerce platform, Caribou CMS. The name has been outgrown slightly but there is enough of a brand created in subscription membership websites that it's not worth changing at this point.

It's a content management system and e-commerce software built for developers and designers to rapidly develop their client's website projects. However, it's also able to be used out-of-the-box (as a SAAS app) by the average Joe who's content with using one of the built-in themes or customizing them to taste.

It's a PHP application built on CodeIgniter 2.0 (from EllisLabs) and shares some similarities to their ExpressionEngine project. However, it far surpasses it in many ways such as ease of templating, e-commerce functionality (shopping cart and subscriptions), ease of use for the end user and administrators, etc. Those are its main points of comparison with most products out there.

I'm really excited to finally get this launched after so long. Too many clients have come and gone waiting for it. So, here it is, ready to go! More updates to come shortly as we flesh out the issues always discovered in the first push to mass market.

It's a free 30 day trial so I would love to see some HN signups and feedback! I'll also respond to any questions to this post. Thanks!

Might want to tune up your 404 page as well :)

http://www.cosupport.us/blog

I like the general site design, but they could have spent more time on the blog:

http://cosupport.us/blog

YIKES.

Potential confounds:

* Google submits many more searches with it's instant AJAX search-as-you-type

* Google's speed allows users to hone in on better search results by tweaking terms, whereas Bing/Yahoo users don't waste their time with a 2nd search

* Google displays the answer right on the results page with superior semantic analysis, nullifying the use of a clickthrough

* Google's tools (such as "define:", math like "4+1.078", and conversions like "45cm in inches") are well-known and people look to Google itself for answers, not secondary sites in results

* If Google's users are more "tech savvy", they may use search qualitatively differently than Bing users (related to the above explanations)

* Google users click on Google Ads more than Bing users click on Bing ads - are ad clicks tracked?

Of course, these could all be wrong. But worth looking into or acknowledging in the research if they already had.

From the article: "I know a union that got a substantial pay raise because a politician did not understand that adding and then subtracting 20% gets you to another result from the one you started."

Wouldn't this be a pay decrease?

x * 1.2 = y

y * 0.8 < x

I guess they believed this too? Or maybe not until too late?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre

Git/SVN imports, and SFTP are the top 2 features on the roadmap.

If a file is modified at a dropzone, it will be overwritten with the latest release (if that file is modified in the package). So, if I have an index.php file that is never updated, then a dropzone modification of index.php will live forever because a new index.php will not be uploaded. Otherwise, if the index.php in the package is updated, it will be overwritten.

Thanks - fixed :)

Been using it internally for a few months. Turning it into a public web app took a few days, as it was built from the get-go for multiple users and secure independent storages, etc.

I built this system to keep all the users running our new web framework up-to-date with the latest release. It's made being a beta tester better for my clients because I'm able to send out patches at any moment and keep everyone entirely up to date. It also saves hours and hours of my time in trying to manage all the different app deployments I have across multiple client websites. It's like SAAS but done remotely.

So, I decided to built a better interface for it and open it up for the public. The public site didn't take long as all of the ecommerce/account management/subscriptions functionality is built into my flagship product.

I don't get it. What does he do?

If you have a hosted order form with Chargify, there's no difference between OpenGateway and Chargify when it comes to PCI compliance. VISA and MasterCard say you should be PCI compliant either way.

Also, OpenGateway doesn't store credit card information which is always good.