I'm back at work on Egor now.
While the old version handled sentences such as 'what is a cat?', I want to now extend this fully to WH questions (what, why, where etc):
Thus questions such as 'where do you live?'. The old system was a bit of a bodge. Now, when a question such as this is formulated, it adds an entry for the 'WH-word' unknown into the knowledge tree... it can either identify the answer now or perhaps come up with the answer at a later time when it has more knowledge.
An interesting thing happens when you look at slightly more complex variants of these questions.
For instance:
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The cat eats sardines in the kitchen.
The cat eats mice in the garden.
Where does the cat eat sardines?
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Initially I was storing the information that the cat eats sardines, and the cat eats mice on separate branches (sub trees) from the subject. However, it occurred that reusing branches may be the way to go, both in terms of efficient compression of information, but also in terms of speedy and efficient access to the information.
However, once you start compressing the information, another 'issue' appears:
If you store, 'the cat eats sardines in the kitchen' in one tree, it essentially doesn't matter the order of the object and supplementary information...
i.e. the cat eats in the kitchen sardines = the cat eats sardines in the kitchen.
Once you start compressing several sentences of information in the same subtree, you then have to start considering the order of information.
Thus: The cat eats sardines in the kitchen, The cat eats tuna in the kitchen...
You may start to think of this as a hierarchy: cat -> eats -> in the kitchen -> sardines / tuna
However, this has many implications. Firstly you can no longer directly store information as generics (i.e. in tree terms the 'in the kitchen' needs to be distinct and have child nodes). This is an added level of complexity - so we would have to be sure we were getting a payback for that complexity.
In addition, once you start to consider several pieces of supplementary information for a sentence, the optimum storage arrangement may not be obvious (i.e. how are you going to regularly access this information determines the best tree structure).
As I am modelling things according to how biological systems tend to work .. there is also the point that biological systems often take the simplest path (making complexity from simple rules) rather than working with a complex 'operating system'. I.e. there is a danger of anthromorphosizing the problem - producing a computer science solution instead of a simpler (possible) biological solution.
I am not sure which one to go with at the moment, because it seems a major design issue. I may well start by experimenting with the simple approach. It may turn out to be incorrect (and later need a considerable rewrite), but the fact is that the whole project is a huge undertaking and I would rather have a simple system working than a more complex system that I didn't have nearly enough time to get to a working state.
In essence I can't hope to get everything perfectly right and optimal on my first attempts, I think this is something that will be refined in many decades to come, to one or several optimal solutions.
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Ending Poverty - Why Geldof's View is Naive
I read today how Geldof is again urging the G8 to 'help the poor' in africa.
A long time ago, do gooders in the 1st world countries noticed the poverty in third world countries, and decided that the best way they could help was by 'charity' and providing loans so these countries could supposedly get on their feet and support themselves to the same 'standards' of the first world countries.
What in fact happened was that money and aid was provided to corrupt governments, who mostly squandered it, leaving the country in debt for stupid amounts of money it had no hope of repaying, with the interest each year on the debt being too much to pay let alone the full amount. This is now generally regarded as a mistake and is referred to as the 'third world debt', and in some cases has been cancelled by the issuing countries.
Yet still there are those that believe that somehow these countries will only be able to advance if given sufficient pots of gold from the first world.
If we ignore the problem of corruption, and totally inappropriate aid (for example education in places where there is no opportunity to utilize that education), there is still an incredibly glaring reason why increasing aid is unlikely to reduce human poverty and misery.
It stems down to very basic population ecology - the concept of the 'carrying capacity'.
From wikipedia:
"The supportable population of an organism, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available within an ecosystem is known as the ecosystem's carrying capacity for that organism. For the human population more complex variables such as sanitation and medical care are sometimes considered as part of the necessary infrastructure.
As population density increases, birth rate often decrease and death rates typically increase. The difference between the birth rate and the death rate is the "natural increase." The carrying capacity could support a positive natural increase, or could require a negative natural increase. Carrying capacity is thus the number of individuals an environment can support without significant negative impacts to the given organism and its environment. A factor that keeps population size at equilibrium is known as a regulating factor. The origins of the term lie in its use in the shipping industry to describe freight capacity, and a recent review finds the first use of the term in an 1845 report by the US Secretary of State to the Senate (Sayre, 2007).
Below carrying capacity, populations typically increase, while above, they typically decrease. Population size decreases above carrying capacity due to a range of factors depending on the species concerned, but can include insufficient space, food supply, or sunlight. The carrying capacity of an environment may vary for different species and may change over time due to a variety of factors including: food availability; water supply; environmental conditions; and living space."
In many third world countries such as africa there is a tendency for large families. That is, with no social security or pensions, a family depends on their children for survival and prosperity. Thus there is as in many species the tendency for the population to increase dramatically over time, if we reduce factors such as disease, war and malnutrition.
In the areas that cause the most concern the population is often by and large limited by these 'misery' factors, such as poverty and disease.
So you have in a village for example, 500 people leading an ok life, and 500 people living in absolute misery, on the brink of death.
Now let's have a look at what happens when you apply aid from the 1st world.
Initially there is much happiness as all of those 1000 people are released from complete poverty and can live an ok life.
However, the problem comes when you consider the population size over time. With this extra help, more of the population live to an older age, and produce many children. The aid that was once there either dries up, or best case stays at the previous level.
What you now end up with is for example, 2000 people living in the same area.
With aid removed, perhaps the land can support 500 people to live comfortably, and now 1500 are living in poverty!! Or best case you have 1500 people permanently dependent on outside financial support.
That's right, think about it for a second. By all that 'do gooding' action, you have let the population increase beyond it's carrying capacity, and you have in effect, tripled the human misery!!
This is why any 1st world intervention to supposedly 'help' a 3rd world country must be carefully planned - because you can see that in the majority of cases, it will result in an increase in suffering, rather than a decrease.
It would seem that the most obvious thing to do to decrease suffering in a harsh part of the world, is to limit the amount of children, so that those that do live there can be better supported by the environment.
A long time ago, do gooders in the 1st world countries noticed the poverty in third world countries, and decided that the best way they could help was by 'charity' and providing loans so these countries could supposedly get on their feet and support themselves to the same 'standards' of the first world countries.
What in fact happened was that money and aid was provided to corrupt governments, who mostly squandered it, leaving the country in debt for stupid amounts of money it had no hope of repaying, with the interest each year on the debt being too much to pay let alone the full amount. This is now generally regarded as a mistake and is referred to as the 'third world debt', and in some cases has been cancelled by the issuing countries.
Yet still there are those that believe that somehow these countries will only be able to advance if given sufficient pots of gold from the first world.
If we ignore the problem of corruption, and totally inappropriate aid (for example education in places where there is no opportunity to utilize that education), there is still an incredibly glaring reason why increasing aid is unlikely to reduce human poverty and misery.
It stems down to very basic population ecology - the concept of the 'carrying capacity'.
From wikipedia:
"The supportable population of an organism, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available within an ecosystem is known as the ecosystem's carrying capacity for that organism. For the human population more complex variables such as sanitation and medical care are sometimes considered as part of the necessary infrastructure.
As population density increases, birth rate often decrease and death rates typically increase. The difference between the birth rate and the death rate is the "natural increase." The carrying capacity could support a positive natural increase, or could require a negative natural increase. Carrying capacity is thus the number of individuals an environment can support without significant negative impacts to the given organism and its environment. A factor that keeps population size at equilibrium is known as a regulating factor. The origins of the term lie in its use in the shipping industry to describe freight capacity, and a recent review finds the first use of the term in an 1845 report by the US Secretary of State to the Senate (Sayre, 2007).
Below carrying capacity, populations typically increase, while above, they typically decrease. Population size decreases above carrying capacity due to a range of factors depending on the species concerned, but can include insufficient space, food supply, or sunlight. The carrying capacity of an environment may vary for different species and may change over time due to a variety of factors including: food availability; water supply; environmental conditions; and living space."
In many third world countries such as africa there is a tendency for large families. That is, with no social security or pensions, a family depends on their children for survival and prosperity. Thus there is as in many species the tendency for the population to increase dramatically over time, if we reduce factors such as disease, war and malnutrition.
In the areas that cause the most concern the population is often by and large limited by these 'misery' factors, such as poverty and disease.
So you have in a village for example, 500 people leading an ok life, and 500 people living in absolute misery, on the brink of death.
Now let's have a look at what happens when you apply aid from the 1st world.
Initially there is much happiness as all of those 1000 people are released from complete poverty and can live an ok life.
However, the problem comes when you consider the population size over time. With this extra help, more of the population live to an older age, and produce many children. The aid that was once there either dries up, or best case stays at the previous level.
What you now end up with is for example, 2000 people living in the same area.
With aid removed, perhaps the land can support 500 people to live comfortably, and now 1500 are living in poverty!! Or best case you have 1500 people permanently dependent on outside financial support.
That's right, think about it for a second. By all that 'do gooding' action, you have let the population increase beyond it's carrying capacity, and you have in effect, tripled the human misery!!
This is why any 1st world intervention to supposedly 'help' a 3rd world country must be carefully planned - because you can see that in the majority of cases, it will result in an increase in suffering, rather than a decrease.
It would seem that the most obvious thing to do to decrease suffering in a harsh part of the world, is to limit the amount of children, so that those that do live there can be better supported by the environment.
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