Lately while doing research on automated language translation, I’ve come to realize that there isn’t a clear, concise, well accepted definition of human language itself. A quick check on google reveals the wealth of interpretations. So then, kindly, let me proffer one more.

Language is the serialization of thought.

The term “serialization” should be ready accessible to programmers et al. For others, a quick explanation is in order. Serialization is the process of taking a complex (e.g wide) entity and transforming it, re-constructively,  such that is can be passed through a much simpler (e.g narrower) channel. A typical requirement for correct serialization is the ability to de-serialize the serialized data to result in exactly the original entity.

A very simple analogy would be “serializing” a bunch of untidy children through a narrow gate, one child at a time. The only caveat being that, if the serialization process was perfect, then the children would regroup on the other side in the exact same configuration as before the serialization started.
Once the concept of serialization is clear, the intent of my definiton of language should also be clear, although you may or may not agree with it.

If we go along this line of thought (pardon the pun), a corollary immediately follows:

Language is the ultimate compression engine.

Why?

If we believe that human thought is one of the most complex phenomena known to us, and if language allows serialization of a complex thought into a small compact representation that can be communicated and stored in a myriad of ways, and ultimately easily de-serialized by target humans to reveal the original thought, then the corollary must be true.

When one thinks hard to solve a problem, it is likely he or she uses bits of language in self-communication to focus attention on particular aspects, annotate the intermediate results, and proceed one by one onto higher level steps. Although the most revealing flashes of insight most likely occur during a moment of unbounded “massively parallel” thought, knowledge of language undoubtedly plays a role in allowing the thinker to carry out elaborate thought experiments.

In primitive cultures (or in someone never exposed to the concept of language), undoubtedly the enterprising inventors of that time devised their own methods of mentally labelling specific ideas with individual symbols, and then using those symbols to ease the task of deriving higher level constructs.

Also, if the above corollary holds weight, I think it has some additional fantastic implications.

This means that if we were to one day achieve “brain dumps”, or “downloading a brain” and their ilk, the best format to allow accurate storage and re-construction would be plain text! If the brain could somehow be tricked into emitting a high speed lecture on its current and past states, then the language best suited for that would be the mother-tongue of the brain’s owner. Nothing else we conceive will probably ever come close in accuracy or compactness.

Of course, this does not bode well for automated machine translation attempts. To be fully successful at that task, implies the ability to de-serialize a piece of text into the original speaker’s thoughts. If we accept that human thought is one of the most complex or mysterious activities known to mankind, then we are accepting that automated machine translation is a pipe dream for many years to come.

On the other hand, if the code of language does get cracked soon, will it mean that human thought is not so complex after all?
 

Reading all the recent brouhaha over the “are we living in a simulation” argument, I’m compelled to write this post.

I seriously wish the people who talk authoritatively about “simulation”, or “simulating life”, have actually tried it themselves. You know, modelled the behaviors, the interactions, the environment, and actually written some code.

Realise this: We cannot yet even accurately simulate a teaspoon of water!

Why? We are talking about 10^24 molecules of H20, thats why! *Even* if every molecule’s state could be accurately  saved in one byte of memory, it would require 1 million peta-bytes. Even if we somehow managed that, the processing power necessary to move to the next state would be enormous. It would take minutes to perform the same movements of all the molecules that reality does in an instant.

Of course, this is assuming that one byte per molecule would be enough. I think, when we actually do reach that capability in a few years/decades, we’ll find that its not enough. We’ll find that the simulation still doesn’t behave accurately like water, when,  for example, the temperature is dropped. “It doesn’t freeze into ice at a simulated temperature of 32F.” Then we’ll find that to achieve that it is necessary to model the states of the individual electrons in each molecule, their orbits and spins etc. And of course, the problem will once again become as difficult as it is today.

And may I remind you, the proponents of the WALIAS theory argue that all our population, all the species, the oceans, the planet, the *entire* universe is a simulation being run by some post-human species.  Now, if one teaspoon of water is so much trouble, why do we expect to be able to “simulate” even one single human brain, which, uhm.., is arguably more complicated?

Does this sound like pessimism? It will to some. I don’t think that way at all. Rather, I think the wrong kind of people have jumped onto the wrong type of bandwagon and are pushing a wrong kind of science.

If we are all indeed living in a simulation, then the only way for any of us to accurately re-simulate anything existing within our world, is to do it using the constructs used by those who are simulating us. We, the simulated, cannot use new constructs created by us to simulate anything in our world. We can only use new constructs created by us to simulate new things, using new rules in a new simulated world.

Therefore, in regular discussion, a simulation should *always* be interpreted as “a crude approximation”. We, or anybody else, *cannot* look at something built according to the rules and constructs of one world-system,  and create an *exact* copy using the rules and constructs of another world-system. It is a physical impossibility.

But, what if through persistent advancement we are able to correctly figure out our exact building blocks, our constructs, the lowest level rules of our world. My own personal view is that we cannot, or for that matter, no entity within a world-system can ever ever realize its own lowest level building blocks, because doing so would violate the laws of its existence. This is where I’ll run afoul of lots of folks, but that is a different matter.

Now, even if we do allow that concession, suppose we do figure it out, and we use it create a copy of some less advanced species known to us, lets say chimps. Suppose we do succeed, and we have a living breathing chimp in front of us. Then that chimp is *NOT* a simulation, it is the real thing! We will have as much control over its behavior as we do over a real chimp. And whats more, it will be *existing* in our own world, our own universe, not within in a walled-garden simulation. Therefore, if the post-humans have followed this scenario, then we exist in the same world as them, and therefore, we are not a simulation.

And, for all of us trying to “simulate life” sometime or the other, I’d like to make this comment: The simulated “life form”, if implemented correctly, no matter how similar its behavior to some real-world life-form, is its own species. It is pointless to compare it with the existing real world thing. Because that is in effect, similar to comparing apples and screen pixels. Yes one day we will succeed in creating artificial life forms, yes they will have “consciousness”. But, the moment they learn to communicate with us in a meaningful way, the word “simulation” will become taboo pretty soon.